
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Ch&^.l.A. Copyright No..... 
Shelf_._v..jCb B 5" 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, 



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IFlanative Ibistor^ 



OF THE 



TOWN OF COHASSET 

MASSACHUSETTS 



e! VICTOR BIGELOW 

Pastor of the Second Congregational Church 



PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF 

Cbe Commfttce on a;own Ibistorg 

1898 



0^^ 



24011 



Copyrighted 1898 
BY E. Victor Bigelow 



TWOCOP.a^,,^C-.VED, 




Press of Samuel Usher, 



DEDICATE D 

XLo ms parents 

I'OK ALL GOOD BEGINNINGS, AND 

XLo mg imife 

WHO CONTINUES EVERY COOU INFLUENCE, AND WHOSE ANCESTORS 

FOR SEVEN GENERATIONS IN THIS TOWN HAVE BEEN 

HONORED HV HER HELP IN WRITING 

THIS BOOK 



O 



^be Zown Seal 

Adopted No\'ember 5, 1898. 




Explanation. — The scene with its ledges and breakers illustrates the meaning 
of the word Cohasset — " A-long-rocky-place." 

Minot Lighthouse and White Head are shown with two old fishing schooners 
at the entrance of the harbor. 

The three buildings, Town Hall, Osgood School, and First Church, symbolize 
the three functions of town life — the municipal, the educational, and the religious. 

The town had never adopted a seal, and the Committee on Town History 
recommended this one devised by the author of this book, after modifying it in 
some details. 



INTRODUCTION 



THE earliest action toward the writing of this history occurred at 
the annual town meeting of March 5, 1894, when, in accord- 
ance with an article previously inserted in the warrant, the following 
persons were appointed as a Committee on Town History : — 

Rev. Joseph Osgood, D.D. Dr. Oliver H. Howe. 

Newcomb B. Tower. E. Pomeroy Collier. 

Aaron Pratt, Esq. Rev. E. Victor Bigelow. 

The Committee were authorized to fill vacancies and to add to their 
number if deemed expedient. At the first meeting, held appropriately 
on Patriots' Day, 1894, Rev. Dr. Osgood was chosen Chairman and 
Dr. Oliver H. Howe, Secretary. By vote of the Committee, Ira B. 
Pratt and George W. Collier were added to their number, making 
eight in all. The early meetings were spent in examining various 
old maps and records and in rehearsing many traditions of early 
times. Of plans for the writing of a history, we had none ; but 
as the next best thing, we set ourselves to the task of collecting 
materials which could be used later by whoever should write the 
history. We recorded every tradition or reminiscence that seemed to 
be of value and secured documents and maps. We also started a 
collection of historical relics, which, by the courtesy of the Trustees 
of the Public Library, we were allowed to place in their reading-room. 
This collection has grown in variety and interest and we hope it will 
be permanently kept, both as an instructive exhibit of implements 
of former times and as a repository for family relics that might 
otherwise become forgotten or lost. The town has provided the 
Committee with a room in the new fireproof vault where any docu- 
ments that are precious for family association may be deposited for 
safe-keeping. 

The Committee repeatedly considered the matter of finding some one 
who would undertake the task of constructing a narrative of the town 
from the materials obtainable. There seemed to be nobody in the 
town willing to undertake so serious a work, and the Committee thought 
it unwise to employ an outsider for the purpose. 

At length, in September, 1896, much to our satisfaction, Rev. IVlr. 
Bigelow volunteered to write the history, which is herewith submitted. 
He has read the whole work to the Committee, chapter by chapter, 



Vi INTRODUCTION. 

thus having the benefit of suggestions throughout. Entering into the 
work with unbounded enthusiasm, he has wrought with painstaking 
thoroughness, exhausting all documentary sources of information, 
delving with rare tact into the early experiences of the oldest inhab- 
itants now living, and giving to the combined product a vivid and 
romantic portrayal. 

The Committee record with deep sorrow the death of their honored 
Chairman, Rev. Joseph Osgood, d.d., on August 2, 1898. Dr. Osgood 
felt the keenest interest in the work of the Committee, and especially in 
the preparation of this history. His lifelong association with the 
town and his devotion to its moral and intellectual advancement made 
this work very dear to his heart. He attended every step of its 
production with careful oversight, and it was one of the satisfactions 
of his last days to have a part in the writing of the history, which he * 
himself, in his fifty-six years here, had been a large factor in making. 

We mourn his loss and sorely regret that he could not live to see 
the publication of the history ; but he has passed to his reward, and his 
faithful, earnest, steadfast life will ever be held in grateful remembrance 
by the people of Cohasset, with whose lives his own was so intimately 
associated. 

Under the new Chairman, the work of the Committee has been con- 
tinued and the details of publication have been carried out. The com- 
pletion of this history should not be regarded as the end of all historical 
work in the town. It ought rather to result in an awakening of the 
public mind to the value of all particulars of our local history. Many 
of the older residents in reading the book will probably recall to mind 
other occurrences not yet recorded. These should form the subjects 
of short articles or sketches and be given to the public through the 
newspapers or otherwise. The Committee will endeavor to have all 
such matters brought forward, and will also care for the collection of 
historical relics and carefully preserve such documents of historical 
value as from time to time are found. 

Another important work for the future is the production of a com- 
prehensive genealogy of the town. This branch of the work has 
already been committed to competent hands, but it will be a laborious 
task for several years, and the cordial support of the town, already 
given, will be relied upon to carry this to completion. 

The Committee desire to give public expression of their gratitude to 
all those who have furnished them with documents and other historical 
data, who have contributed to the collection of relics, or who, by their 

* Those interested in the career of this venerable pastor will find an interesting 
account in the volume published in 1892, entitled A Fifty Years' Pastorate, being 
a report of his fiftieth anniversary. 



INTRODUCTIOI^. yi{ 

kindly interest and helpful suggestions, have facilitated the production 
01 this work. 

With the hope of increasing and gratifying the historical impulse 
among our people, we respectfully submit this, the first history of the 
town of Cohasset. 

NEWCOMB B. TOWER, Chairman, 
OLIVER H. HOWE, Secretary, 
AARON PRATT, 
IRA B. PRATT, 
E. P. COLLIER, 
GEORGE W. COLLIER, 
Members of Comtnittee on Town History. 



THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 



A FEW remarks, more personal and confidential than would be 
appropriate in the body of this book, ought to be made. Be- 
fore this attempt to give the story of our town's life, almost no histor- 
ical account had been undertaken. Rev. Jacob Flint's " Two Century 
Discourses" had been written in the year 1821 ; but the nature of a 
sermon could scarcely permit the introduction of much matter of his- 
torical value. Fifty years later, 1870, at the celebration of the first 
century of town life, Hon. Thomas Russell, of Boston, delivered an 
oration remarkably full of picturesque events gathered from the public 
records ; but a single address was of course inadequate for a town his- 
tory. Of late years a number of towns have indulged the instinct for 
reminiscing by publishing their own biographies, but this town for 
many years has had no one willing to become its historian, and even 
now, but for the urgency of Samuel T. Snow, this writing would not 
have been commenced. 

The hand of an alien might well hesitate to record the private affairs 
of a conservative New England town, but it is hoped that a spirit of 
fairness and his admiration for the town may be relied upon to make 
up his deficiency in blood connection. Coming to this picturesque 
village from the outside world, it has been the writer's fortune to be 
received into the inside confidence of many hearts. It has been a 
labor of love to learn from those who have had the experience of living 
some of the deep facts of life, and to narrate some of the circumstances 
of former lives in this community. 

While the pleasure of this has been constant, the labor has been 
heavy and continuous for two or three years. No pathway into the 
mass of historical documents had ever been opened. In fact, only the 
meagerest collection of manuscripts could be found in the town's 
archives, while private diaries and stories and other such memorials 
were almost wholly wanting. It is regretted that no larger amount of 
literary or historic bent has ever been shown by the inhabitants of 
Cohasset, but some valual)le documentary work has been done. New- 
comb B. Tower a number of years ago copied many items from the 
town records of Hingham which concerned Cohasset in the early days 
when both were one. Many years ago Elisha Doane and his son, 
James C. Doane, gathered some interesting documents which they 
preserved. The late Joseph Osgood, d.d., kept an ancient map and a 
copy of Parson Hobart's diary. Alexander Williams, some twenty 



X THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

years ago, took the trouble of securing the inscriptions upon our cem- 
etery gravestones. The late Col. T. W. Clarke made valuable re- 
searches into the subject of early divisions of land. These and others 
made some commendable efforts at gathering and preserving historical 
data; but many are the papers and tax lists and old account books, 
valuable beyond estimate, which have been lost. 

Many trips to Boston have been required to obtain information at the 
State archives, where reports of our fisheries and documents concern- 
ing the wars had been rescued from the tide of destruction. At the 
Custom House day after day had to be spent in gleaning over many 
thousands of enrollments and registers to find out what vessels were 
built or owned here. Searching among old deeds at the Registry and 
old wills in the Probate Office in the Court House at Boston has 
brought to light some interesting details, but no one ever may know 
the delving in monotonous documents that was fruitless or the labor 
lost in following wrong scents. 

But how will the result of it all be judged.'' No doubt some persons 
will feel much disappointed ; so is the author. No doubt some will 
say, " Our grandfathers ought to have been named at such a place;" 
and probably they are right. Information which has been solemnly 
guaranteed to the author by one will be point-blank denied by some 
reader who is sure he knows better ; but the author has surrendered 
the claim of accuracy. He has become fortified by this brazen humil- 
ity while seriously endeavoring to be fair and fairly thorough. 

The ground covered has been from the beginning of our geological 
existence up to the moment of this pen mark ; but the details of the 
early settlers' careers have been more emphasized than some later 
events. In fact, so much has been neglected in some periods that the 
author has almost wished he had time to write another book of equal 
size upon the points neglected in this. For the scientific accuracy of 
matters presented in the geological chapters the author has had the 
privilege of recourse to Prof. \V. O. Crosby, of the Massachusetts 
Institute of Technology. Both chapters have been submitted to him, 
and having his approval the author feels fairly secure from blunders in 
those scientific matters. The geological reader is referred to Professor 
Crosby's own books upon the Boston Basin for more complete treat- 
ment of the subject. There are spots in the book which ought to be 
rewritten to be accurate and lucid, and other generations following us 
may find it necessary to recast the whole story which we have molded ; 
but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

Many important account books and other historical data have been 
collected by the author and his associates and have been placed in the 
town's new fireproof vault with the fond hope of making some future 



THE AUTHOR'S PREFACE. XI 

historian happy. The town has cordially fathered our enterprise from 
the day we asked a Committee on Town History to be appointed until 
now, when that Committee has drawn twelve hundred dollars from the 
treasury to pay for printing this volume. Since the author began his 
series of interviews with people whose memories were filled with help- 
ful information, many of them have been taken from this life. The 
latest loss was the venerable Chairman of our Committee, Rev. Joseph 
Osgood, D.D., whose interest in this narrative had been most cordially 
shown as the successive chapters, until nearly the last, were read in 
his presence. It is a source of gratification to those who loved him 
that his long career of usefulness devoted to the moral and intellectual 
well-being of the town was finished in so appropriate a service as his 
work for the town's history. The other members of the Committee 
have aided very much by criticism and by suggestion, and special men- 
tion should be made of the faithful service of the Secretary, Dr. Oliver 
H. Howe. 

It would be impossible to name all the persons who have helped the 
author generously in his search for facts ; indeed any mention of them 
would be unfair to the larger number who have been more than ready 
to help in the same way if called upon. The days of tramping over 
pastures and through the woods with his friends, the author can never 
forget. The bits of information given to him by men from their own 
observations upon nature have been a constant surprise. If the facts 
noted down in these pages are of a kind that interest the author more 
than the reader, it is because of his mental limits that have kept him 
to the things which appeal to his own peculiar nature. Several themes, 
however, as the customs of dress, of language, of amusement, of work, 
and the like, which appeal to the author, have been neglected because 
so few secure facts were obtainable in these lines. Many anecdotes of 
individuals like those of Deacon Isaiah Litchfield and of Dr. Ezekiel 
Pratt would have made interesting reading, but an appropriate place 
for them could not be found in this brief narrative. It would be a 
permanent source of enjoyment and information if a series of these 
anecdotes could be committed to paper before they are forgotten. 

In asking his townspeople to be considerate where he has been 
remiss, the author relies upon a kindness which he has found to be 
imbedded in the hearts of these people, and he hereby acknowledges 
his debt of gratitude to all. If it can be done wHhout making a dis- 
tinction that is invidious, he desires to acknowledge his special obli- 
gation to the church of which he has the honor to be pastor for any 
good work which he may have accomplished in the past seven years ; 
for they trusted him when a stranger, and they have supported him 
with unstinted heart and hand through every work he has undertaken. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 
What and Where I 

Rocky Shore — Cooting — Yachting — Jerusalem Road — Granite 
Wall — Livelihood — Churches — Old and New. 

CHAPTER H. 

Making the Rock Bottom lo 

Uneven Rock Surface — Granite forming in the Earth's Bowels — 
Three Kinds — Dikes — Faultings. 

CHAPTER HI. 
How the Soil came 31 

The Glacier — Its Formation, its Movement — Scratches — Drumlins 

— Indian Pot — Tipling Rocks — Punch Bowl — The Ridges. 

CHAFFER IV. 
Clothed with Vegetation 54 

Snow Alga and Seaweed - — Lichens — Mosses — Ferns — Funguses 

— The Coming of the Forests — Grasses — Trees — Shrubs. 

CHAPTER V. 
The Aborigines 69 

Prehistoric Life — Stone Axes, Knives, Sinkers, etc. — The Algonquin 
Tribes — Camps by our Shore — Gookin's Description — Winslow on 
their Religion — The Indians' Yearly Program. 

CHAPTER VI. 
The " Quonahassit " Pioneers 93 

Early Wanderers — John Smith's Discovery of our Harbor, 1614 — 
Meaning of Name Cohasset — The First Appearance on a Map — 
From Old Hingham to New — Our Marsh Hay — Pasture for 
Hingham — The Militia Rebellion. 



xiv CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

A Bone of Contention "9 

Natural Boundary — Encroachments for Hay — Orders by Plymouth 
Court and by Massachusetts Court — The Commissioners' Boundary — 
Endicott and Bradford — Threescore Acres — Laying them out. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

Dividing the Land i34 

The Marshes First — Three Divisions — Indian Deed — Dividing 
Uplands — Joshua Fisher, Surveyor — Drawing Shares — First Di- 
vision — Second — Third — H igh way s. 

CHAPTER IX. 
The First Homes . 158 

No Log Huts — Saw-pit Boards — Cornelius Canterbury — King 
Philip's War — Daniel Lincoln — Mordecai Lincoln — John Jacob 
and his Bridge at Cold Spring — Ibrook Tower — Aaron Pratt — 
Wolf Pits. 

CHAPTER X. 
The Autonomy of a Precinct 182 

Remoteness of Cohasset Settlers — Attending Church in Hingham — 
Demand for Church of their Own — Industries growing — Demand 
refused — Effort to be set off as a Precinct — Granted by General 
Court of Massachusetts, 171 7 — Ministers — Church Covenant — 
Dame Schools — School Money. 

CHAPTER XL 
" An Highway shall be There and a Way " 204 

Wretched Roads — Fisher's Highways — Indian Trails — Landings 

— Beechwood Street — Main Street — Jerusalem Road — Elm 
Street — Encroachments — Wood Roads, etc. 

CHAPTER XII. 

Industries and Firesides 219 

Poverty and Ingenuity — Sheep Shearing — Spinning — Flax and 
Linen — Tanning — Shoemakers — Food — " Rye 'n' Injun " — Pies 

— Corned Beef — Killings — Calf's Head and Pluck — Fish — Early 
Fishermen — Cheese — Butter — Soft Soap — Candles — Cider — 
Church Services — Physicians — Diphtheria Scourge, 1735 — Ceme- 
teries — A Wedding — A List of Personal Property, 1749. 



CONTENTS. XV 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Separation from Hingham 247 

Growth of the Community — Thirty Fishing Vessels — Sawmill and 
Corn Mills — The Homes of that Time now Standing — Petition of 
Precinct to be made a Town — Refusals, Petitions, Counter- 
petitions — Success at last, 1770 — The Charter of Town — List of 
Taxpayers of 1771. 

CHAPTER XIV. 
The Revolutionary War 277 

Wars Preceding the Revolution — Capture of Louisburg — French 
Reduction — William Pitt Medal — Tea Party — Battle of Lexington 

— Cohasset Company — Bunker Hill — Persis Tower — Dorchester 
Heights — Capture of English Brig — Diary of Ambrose Bates — 
Not Worth a Continental — Surrender of Cornwallis. 

CHAPTER XV. 
Recuperating During the First Years of the Republic .... 311 

Financial Embarrassment — Rev. John Brown's Diary — Vessels — 
Doane's Mil — Wreck of Gertrude Maria, 1793 — Shipbuilding 

— P'ish Packing — Foreign Voyages — Tanneries — Little Harbor 
Meadows. 

CHAPTER XVI. 
The Militia and the War of 1812 335 

Early Trainbands — Continental Army — Militiamen of Cohasset, 
1808 — British Embargo and Kidnapping — The Little United States 
Navy — British threaten Cohasset — Lieut. Thomas Stoddard's 
Account — Peace Celebration — Militia, continued till 1840. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Town's Church and its Divorce 356 

Town at first supplied Religious Function — Pastor, Janitor, Deacons, 
Singers, etc. — Methodist Church at North Cohasset, 181 8 — Division 
at the Center — Second Church organized, 1824 — Unitarians — 
Church divorced from Town. 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

School Progress and the Academy 373 

Dame Schools — Master — First Schoolhouse — Navigation — 
Beechwood School — Jerusalem — Studies — Quill Pens, etc. — 
King Street School — Districts — Academy — Proprietors and Pu- 
pils — Centralizing Government — High School. 



XVI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIX. 
The Fishing Industry 395 

Early Codfishing — Mackerel — Pinkies — List of Vessels built from 
181 1 to 1819 — Foreign Freighters — List of Mackerel Schooners, 
1819 — Prices of Mackerel, etc.- — ■ Detailed Account of a Fishing 
Trip — Packing the Fish — Salt-making. 

CHAPTER XX. 
The Fishing Industry (continued) 419 

More Shipbuilding, 1819-37 — 1883 — Banner Year for Mackerel, 
1848 — The Portuguese Newcomers — Wreck of the Maine — 
Fishing Business Waning — Dead. 

CHAPTER XXL 
Stagecoach, Packet, and Railway 435 

Mail Carrying — Scituate and Boston Stage — Hinghani Boats — 
Jerusalem Road Stage — The First Wagon — Packets — The Forty- 
niners — Foreign Packeting — South Shore Railroad — The Cele- 
bration — New York, New Haven & Hartford. 

CHAPTER XXH. 
Wrecks, Wrecking, and Minot Light 455 

Wrecks One Hundred Years Ago — The Gulf Tragedy — Under- 
writers' Agents — Wrecking, Spanish Frigate — List of Losses — 
Minot Leage — W'reck of the Lrimigrant Vessel St. John — Tho- 
reau's Account — The Iron Lighthouse — Building the Stone Light- 
house — Recent Wrecks. 

CHAPTER XXIII. 
The Civil War 483 

Abraham Lincoln's Cohasset Ancestry — Cohasset Slaves — South- 
ern Sympathizers — First Enlistments — After Bull Run — Heavy 
Artillery Men — Engineers, Sappers, and Miners — Navy Enlist- 
ments — Three-year Enlistments — Nine Months' Call — Gettysburg 

— More Navy and Army Enlistments — Women at Home scraping 
Lint. 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
Up to Date 505 

Story of Churches to Date — Methodist — Unitarian — Congrega- 
tional — Beech wood — Catholic — Episcopal — Some Comparisons 

— Schools — Building the Osgood School — Washington Library — 
Debating Societies — Free Public Library — Water Works — Sum- 
mer Residents — Electric Lights — Recent Driveways — Changes to 
come — Suburban Destiny. 

APPENDIX. 
Botany of the Town. A Partial List, by Miss Priscilla L. Collier . 541 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Coh asset Railway Station Frontispiece 

The " Stern and Rock-bound Coast " 2 

One Day's Bag of Coots for Four Men 4 

Great Diabase Dike, Jerusalem Road 21 

Gap on Windmill Point 23 

Dike at White Head 24 

Glacial Scratches 36 

Shell Fragments 39 

Indian Pot 42 

Tipling Rock . . , . ; 44 

Bigelow Bowlder 45 

Rooster Rock 46 

Ode's Den 47 

Burbank Bowlder . . % 48 

Bladder Rockweed 55 

Bladder Rockweed, Magnified 55 

Bladder Rockweed upon Windmill Point 56 

Little Harbor 64 

The Pines, Howe's Road 67 

Indian Stone Sinkers 71 

Indian Stone Bobs 72 

Squaw's Knife 82 

Spearheads, Knife Blade 87, 90, 91 

Captain John Smith 95 

Winthrop Map (South Shore) lOO 

Haying, Eleazer's Lane 112 

Wooden Bridge at the Gulf 124 

Hominy Point and Bassing Beach 128 

Map of Division of Lands, Rocky Nook 157 

Old Souther Home 160 

Turtle Island Sawmill 168 

Squire Pratt's Office 174 

Old Curiosity Shop 177 

Seltle and Flax Wheel . 180 

Where the Sea Lashes the Rock 186 

" When Winter's Snowy Pinions Shake the White Down in the Air " . 197 

Mouth of Little Harbor in Winter 201 

The Pioneer's Chariot 204 

Panorama of Elm Street 206, 207 

The New State Road in Great Swamp 215 

Plan of Southern Boundary of Town 217 

Beginning of a Logbook 228 

C'ut of Ship from Nathaniel Nichols' Notebook 229 

Cheese Press, etc 232 

Ready for Church One Hundred Years Ago 238 

Mystery Millstone 251 

Lincoln Homestead 254 



xvu 



XVIU ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Home of the Late Rev. Joseph Osgood 255 

Petition for Precinct Meeting, Facsimile, etc 262, 263 

WiHiam Fitt Medal 282 

Mihtary Hat and Cartridge Box of Revolutionary Soldiers 291 

Leaf from Diary of Ambrose Bates 301 

Continental Money, Fifty-dollar Bill 305 

Continental Money, Four-dollar Bill 306 

First Map of the Town made for the State 315 

South Main Street 317 

North Main Street 327 

Joel Willcutt's CobbHng Shop 329 

Cunningham Bridge 331 

A Certihcate of American Citizenship 340 

Home of Deacon Bourne 348 

Summer Street in Winter 351 

First Parish Pulpit 366 

Methodist Church 368 

Congregational Church 371 

A Problem in Navigation 376 

Interior Plan of the Pirst Beechwood School 378 

Academy Desk, 1830 385 

Winter Scene from Sunset Rock 388 

Codtishing off the Banks 396 

Hull of a Pinky, 1820 399 

Map, 1852, showing Salt Worics 414 

Mackerel Schooner of 1850 421 

Map of Wharves in Fishing Days 427 

Mackerel Schooner of 1875 433 

James House Fifty Years Ago 436 

Old Black Rock House, 1850 439 

Head of the Cove, 1898 443 

First Cohasset Station 448 

Onset of a Wave, Pleasant Beach 453 

Ice Boating on the Gulf 457 

The Old Iron Lighthouse on Minot Ledge 470 

Shaping Lighthouse Stones on Government Island 472 

Sections of the Lighthouse 475, 478, 479, 480 

Minot Light Half Grown 477 

Cohasset Common (about 1840) 485 

Lily Pond 492 

Pleasant Beach 498 

Beechwood Congregational Church 508 

St. Anthony's Church (Roman Catholic) 510 

Osgood School 517 

Plan of Water Works in the Picle 526 

Profile of Daniel Webster 528 

Cohasset Savings Bank 533 

Walnut Angle, Aldrich Estate 534 

Colonel Pope's Residence, Jerusalem Road 537 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



CHAPTER I. 

WHAT AND WHERE. 

TT would be a species of impertinence to the majority of 
the readers of this narrative if one should tell where 
Cohasset is by the number of miles from some other 
place. Here is their home ; and a long row of ancestors^ 
born and buried here for two hundred years, establishes 
this as the starting point from which they locate all other 
places, but which itself needs no locating. 

But there are other homes besides this ; so for the sake 
of them and of the much-traveled cosmopolitan, Cohasset 
may be admitted to be distant from Boston fifteen miles 
southeastward as the coot flies, but as the New York, 
New Haven and Hartford Railway meanders along the coast 
twenty-two miles. 

The blue waters of Massachusetts Bay cast their white 
spray upon its rocky shore. If the long peninsula of 
Cape Cod be legitimately pictured as a bended arm of 
defense against the fierce Atlantic, then Cohasset is 
the shoulder receiving the merciless waves that roll in 
above the reach of that arm. 

To the mariner of the world-swathing sea, we are 
naught but a sign of danger and of death ; for the gleam 
of Minot's Lighthouse, rising out of the dark sea, is a 
warning most solemn of the treacherous ledges that fringe 
our shore. 

These rocks spread like a network to catch the unwary. 
Nearly every ledge has crushed with its jagged teeth the 
ribs of some luckless craft. The splinters and remnants 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



of scores of wrecks throughout two centuries and a half 
have strewn these beaches. 

Many a corpse, far from its native land, has been cast 
up, and has lain, rolled in blankets of seaweed like a mock 
burial in the sand, until the pitying hands of men have 
brought it to a respectable grave. 

When the northeast hurricane shrieks among the shreds 
of a shivering ship, Minot's Light tells the seaman that 




Photo, Miss Annie Hartwell. 

The " Stern and Rock-kound Coast." 

Cohasset is the one place in this world where he does not 
wish to go. 

But the sea, not the shore, is at fault ; for when the 
waters are persuaded to be still, and the light of a summer 
sun glows pink and gray and green upon the granite edge 
of our grassy groves, there is no sweeter beauty to be 
found. The denizens of many a baking city have fled to 
this summer retreat and have bathed their lungs with its 
salt air and ozone. To them the name of Jerusalem Road 
is the synonym of a unique shore drive along three or four 



WHA T AND WHERE. 3 

miles of Macadam at the rim of the water, where every 
short turn throws before the eye a new scene of petite 
beauty like the surprise of a kaleidoscope. 

The carriage drives, both sylvan and seaside, are not yet 
invaded by the lumbering cars of the trolley witch, and 
they invite the luxurious vehicles drawn by well-muscled 
roadsters to bowl along their curves. If the shades of the 
ancient ox cart and of the antique two-wheeled chaise are 
uneasy in jealousy of their modern successors, the blame 
is to be laid upon the beauty* of the place that invited the 
change. 

Everywhere towards Boston, our market place, the neigh- 
boring shore, except Nantasket, is marred by mud flats and 
by lazy tide wash. Towards the south are cliffs of gravel 
and long beaches. Here only are those massive rocks 
along the shore which push off the mighty sea, and which 
everywhere inland lift their heads above the greensward 
like sphinxes shaking off the soil. 

For geologists, our uneven surface, made up of water- 
worn ledges with gravel deposits and drumlins and kettle 
holes, is an important chapter for study. For them, the 
long wall of solid granite with which we oppose the sea at 
our northern verge is a lower jaw that has crunched the 
rock deposits of Boston basin through millions of years. 

The strata of pudding stone and of lava which once, 
aeons ago, lay level in that basin, are crumpled and sadly 
tumbled by the pressure of this granite jaw against its 
northern counterpart. 

But a nearer history than these geological cycles finds 
here a pregnant page. 

* The town has long been conscious of the beauty of its landscape. The people 
have been well aware also of an unusual degree of beauty in many of their 
maidens' faces, as the following local ditty will indicate : — 

" Cohasset for beauty, 
Hingham for pride, 
If not for its herring 
Wevmoulh had died." 



4 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

When the coast of New England first received the tides 
of European immigration, the two settlements, Plymouth 
at the south and Massachusetts at the north, came to- 
gether at Cohasset harbor. Just as two tides meeting 
each other make a choppy disturbance of the water called 
the tide rip, so the expansive movement of these two 
colonies made a line of disturbance that happens to be the 
southern boundary of Cohasset. The account of this con- 
tention, with its rich historical associations, will be a sub- 
ject for perusal some pages further on ; but the importance 
of that event lends interest to our town which increases 
with time. 

Not all, however, who are interested in this place have 
the animus of history ; there are many who find sporting 
the cause of their quest. From times long before Daniel 
Webster snapped his gun at a coot flying along our north- 




Photo, M. H. Reaniy 

One Day's Bag of Coots for Four Men. 



JVHA T AND WHERE. 5 

ern shore down to the present day, gunning has been 
good here. In the fall of the year, when storms drive 
them from their northern feeding grounds, these birds, the 
CEdemia perspicillata, and several other kinds journey to 
the south along our way. 

The incessant popping of guns in the early morning an- 
nounces to the distant villagers that flocks of these black 
feathered and gray birds are stopped in their flight by the 
lead pellets of some boatmen anchored near their decoys. 

Birds varying in size from a peep to a wild goose make 
game for sporting men, and constitute a feature of the 
town. 

But sporting birds of another style, with white wings 
after the model of Burgess or of Herreshoff, gather in 
flocks within our narrow harbor, many of them bearing 
the colors of the Cohasset Yacht Club. From the dignity 
of an international racer like the Shadow, down to the 
flit-about "half-raters," they all bring thoughts and men to 
the theme of Cohasset. 

But these playthings, neat and smart, are a modern 
parody of the sober commerce of former years, when- 
fleets of sloops and schooners warped their heavy hulks 
up to the various wharves, and poured out merchandise or 
mackerel or codfish in countless quintals. 

These ocean carrier birds are long since extinct, and 
now have only the province of memory to themselves. 
The wharves have been toppling one by one into the sea, 
and the few that are left sigh for the friends and the 
burdens of former years. 

And if the fishes as well as wharves could reminisce, 
they would ponder upon modern depravity ; for in the 
good old days of their ancestors, there was a familiar jour- 
ney for them up the channel of the Gulf and on up the 
fresh water of Bound Brook, where the spawn could be 
laid. But now the fish that swim the old way are a meager 
mess. 



6 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

Not SO badly off are the lobsters ; for these crawling 
insects of the sea are still in large companies upon the 
sandy plateaus under water between the ledges outside the 
harbor. They find scores of little cages with food inside 
left there by the fishermen, and so they crawl in to dine. 
Fatal is their temerity ; for they are soon drawn up to be 
cooked in boiling caldrons for many dainty dishes in dis- 
tant towns. So the epicure loves us for our red crusta- 
ceans. But whether for beauty of landscape, or for small 
taxes, or for coots, or for anything else, it is good to be 
loved. 

This little town, with a population of 2,474, ^-^d an 
assessed value of $5,293,371, with its third-class post office 
and its second-class lighthouse, has undergone many 
changes since the axe of the pioneers first resounded 
among its wooded hills. 

Some of the most rapid of these changes are occurring 
now, for within the last decade or more this community 
has been caught in the spreading environs of its neighbor- 
ing metropolis, Boston, and is being steadily transformed 
from an ancient New England sea town into a modern 
suburb. 

It will be perhaps of a broader than local interest to 
trace the movement of life in its evolution at this locality. 
From the first crude methods of coaxing a livelihood out 
of wild nature to the present complex employments, 
there is a series of significant changes. Life was at first 
a hunt for game and a labor for crops. It afterwards be- 
came a community of farmers who gained more than a 
living, so that a surplus was bestowed upon social life. 
Still later the products of the community became great 
enough to overflow into the world's markets, when cargoes 
of fish were salted and shipped for consumers upon oppo- 
site sides of the globe. 

The life of this community thus became functional to 
the world's commerce. But later this stream of produce 



IVflA T AND WHERE. J 

dried up, and the life of the place found wholly new chan- 
nels for flowing into the sea of humanity. The coming of 
a railroad invited first individuals, then streams of them, 
to pour into the great city where the productive power 
of the community is applied immediately to the world's 
machinery. One hundred families, at a low estimate, 
are thus directly engaged in urban industries. As many 
as forty families gain their livelihood as employees of the 
railroad, while the remainder supply these and the sum- 
mer resorters with the necessary services of life. At 
first, nearly everything consumed or used in the commu- 
nity was made here ; but that self-sufficiency has long 
since gone. In its place there is an importation of all 
needed supplies, while the money to buy them is earned 
for the larger part outside of the town. 

Besides this general movement of life, there are specific 
features whose development is worth considering. The 
schools, for example, were nothing but the hard experi- 
ences of life at first ; then came the dame schools, scantily 
paid for scant instruction, and then the grammar school 
and the high school. Private schools and public schools 
have both flourished as the special means of coaxing the 
intellects of the young into a useful activity. The system 
to-day, having a central building to which the children 
radiate from every part of the township, includes an in- 
struction very different from the crude methods of the 
past ; and yet it is but the natural development of all that 
preceded it. 

Furthermore, there is to be traced the religious life of 
the community, in which the loftiest ideals of the people 
have found their exercise and their culture. 

The church was at first the property and function of 
the entire community. For a whole century it remained 
so, giving all the people an undivided property interest in 
the town's minister ; but the time came when the agonies 
of parturition arose. For differences in faith and for per- 



8 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

sonal predilections the community became divided. The 
church was no longer the town's church ; but each of 
several churches became a center of devotion for separate 
elements of the people. The unity once broken was yet 
further divided, until now our system of spiritual machin- 
ery has six churches. 

The old meeting-house still stands upon the public com- 
mon where the precinct placed it. The name which dis- 
tinguishes it from its modern companions is Unitarian. 
The Second Congregational Church is near it, and a half 
mile away the Roman Catholic edifice gathers a numerous 
flock. An Episcopal Church, organized within the past 
two years, dwells at a friendly distance between. Two 
others, a Congregational Church in Beechwood and a 
Methodist Church at the northern part of the town, sup- 
ply the religious life of the people who dwell at a distance 
from the center. 

The causes that have brought about these ecclesiastical 
changes, indeed all the phenomena of religious life dis- 
cernible in the history of this community, invite our minds 
to athoughtful review of them. 

One of the noticeable characteristics of the town is the 
mixture of things crude and ancient with things of a 
modern, up-to-date air. For example, an old town pump 
stands in our street not far from a hydrant of the latest 
public water system ; old kerosene lamp posts no longer 
used are looked down upon by incandescent bulbs of 
electricity ; houses whose every timber and moulding 
were made by hand from the logs of our own woods 
are in yards adjoining the luxurious dwellings of modern 
architecture. 

These and various other contrasts are apparent through- 
out the town. The most prominent feature of the town, 
that by which we are most widely known in the world, is 
Jerusalem Road, along which so many delightful summer 
homes have been built overlooking: the sea. 



JV/IA T AND WHERE. g 

No book or bit of literature has ever given us a place 
in the world's fame. No public man of national impor- 
tance has ever made this place conspicuous before our 
nation. No historical event has ever transpired here 
which has called the attention of historians. Neverthe- 
less, for those whose home it is, there is no place more 
important; and the romance of both nature and human 
life which may be told of this spot is doubtless able to 
catch the sympathetic hearing of many who are not too 
busy with other parts of the world. 



CHAPTER II. 

MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 

THE narrative of Cohasset may well commence with 
the romance of rock. The making- of its rock 
foundation is a story that nature has recorded so honestly 
and so minutely that men may read what events occurred 
here millions ot years ago. 

There is nothing so old in the town as the rock ledges 
that push-up their elbows and their shoulders at haphazard 
places everywhere. They toe the edge of our streets, 
make backs for houses to rest upon, and lift their heads 
for observatories, like Sunset Rock. 

Not only at the jutting-out points, but underlying every 
inch of soil is the solid rock bottom. 

People find it when digging down to make their cellars 
or their wells. The roadmakers find it when they grade 
down the streets. Every one may find it who will take 
the pains to lift off the garment of soil that has been 
spread in layers and in heaps upon it. 

Like flesh upon a bony skeleton, the soil has clothed the 
rock, hiding many deep crevices and rounding over many 
jagged ledges ; but everywhere the same kind of rock is 
to be found spreading under the town. 

The deepest probing to find rock bottom has been done 
in the meadow called the Picle,* near by the Pumping 
Station, where the well-borers found forty feet in depth of 
clay and sand and gravel upon that basin of rock. Forty 
feet below the grass in that place means thirty-three feet 
lower than the sea level, and it is fairly safe to assume 

* Pronounced by people here Pi'kl. 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. I I 

that the solid rock surface is nowhere in town much farther 
below our daily vision than this in the Picle. 

The highest point of solid rock is in the southwestern 
part of the town, near the Hingham line, not far from 
Doane Street. There the height of about one hundred 
and thirty feet above sea level is attained by the uneven 
granite floor. From thirty-three feet below to one hun- 
dred and thirty feet above the mean water line gives a 
maximum undulation of one hundred and sixty-three feet. 
Assuming the town to be two and a half miles wide, the 
greatest unevenness would be only one eightieth of the 
breadth of the town. 

It will be readily seen, therefore, that the rock bottom, 
in spite of all its ledges and its channels, comes propor- 
tionately much nearer being smooth than an ordinary door- 
step or the palm of one's hand. 

But, smooth or rough, according to the standard of es- 
timate assumed, the course of events which made it what 
it is may be partially narrated. 

It will be noticed that the rock is granite at almost 
every point where it crops out, and granite is a kind of 
rock which cannot be formed except under immense pres- 
sure and in the presence of confined moisture. If a piece 
of it were to be melted in a crucible it could never become 
granite again upon cooling, but only a glassy lump of 
slag ; for it needs a weight of more than fifteen thousand 
pounds upon every inch of it, and also it needs a great deal 
of moisture for the crystals to form as they are in granite. 
Furthermore, these same quartz crystals take a very dif- 
ferent shape when free from pressure. 

In the granite they have accommodated themselves to 
the spaces left around the black crystals of hornblende 
and the milky crystals of feldspar. 

Both the hornblende and the feldspar seem to have got 
into shape first ; whereas in the ordinary conditions above 
ground, quartz crystals harden sooner than these others. 



12 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

Subterranean pressure and subterranean heat make a 
complicated condition of affairs that cannot be reproduced 
in our artificial devices, though it may be fairly well under- 
stood. The facts about granite such as these noted, and 
many others wherever granite is found, tell very conclu- 
sively that it was not formed as limestone and sandstone 
and slate and other sedimentary rocks by a deposit on the 
earth's surface, but rather at a prodigious depth under the 
solid ground, and by the slow crystallizing of molten sub- 
stance. From two to five miles thick of other rock must 
have lain upon the stuff that crystallized into granite. 

In some places of the world where the layers of rock 
have been turned up edgewise by the earth's upheavals, 
the granite appears, and the layers that formerly rested 
horizontally upon it have been measured from surface to 
surface, and thus have been ascertained to be miles thick. 

In the middle part of Massachusetts there is a layer of 
slatestone which is ten thousand feet thick, and it shows 
every indication that it once was spreading fiat over all the 
eastern part of the State and far out into the bed of the 
ocean. It has been tipped up by a slight wrinkling of the 
earth's skin, and that part which was over Cohasset has 
been worn off by the waves and by the gases of the air 
and by the rain washings of countless ages. 

Sir William Thomson, whose opinion in matters of 
the age of this earth is the most mature, estimates that 
twenty-five millions of years have passed by since the 
Cambrian period, — the time when our granite began to 
be pushed upward by the little wrinkle that was necessary 
in the skin of the earth. If this estimate be true, the 
pushing was so slow that if successive generations of 
people had Hved on top of the wrinkle they would have 
been willing to swear an affidavit that not one inch had it 
moved. But nature speaks more correctly the facts than 
any human testimony. 

If our most reliable citizen to-day were asked whether 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



13 



the land of Cohasset is growing higher or lower, he would 
probably say, it is not changing; and yet nature has 
been recording a slow subsidence as lately as a few 
hundred years past, and probably to-day it is more rapid 
by far than the movement of the granite referred to. 

For example, in the salt meadow of the Gulf where 
the channel cuts the banks, there are to be seen when the 
tide is out the protruding roots of alder trees which could 
not have grown in a place so much below salt water. 
Furthermore there are three feet of marsh mud on top 
of the clay where those roots grew, which have been 
deposited while the land has been settling. How old are 
the roots ? Certainly not four thousand years ! And yet 
if the earth here at Cohasset has settled four feet in these 
four thousand years, that would be at the rate of five 
miles in twenty-five million years. Not half as fast a 
movement of the earth's surface is claimed for the 
wrinkling which brought our granite up. 

There are many other places in Eastern Massachusetts 
where nature has recorded the same subsidence in these 
late years. 

At the mouth of Weir River in Hingham, on the north 
side of Rockland Street, a little way from the Cohasset 
boundary, cedar stumps can be seen in a meadow which 
the salt water now overflows. Again, at Sandy Cove, 
Cohasset, the mud of an ancient bog on the beach is now 
exposed, showing that the sea has risen several feet since 
the bog was formed. 

Down upon the Cape, in the town of Orleans, one may 
see a forest of stumps several feet under the clear sea 
water a quarter of a mile from shore. 

The slow falling or rising of the land is not incredible 
when the facts are so plain as these. 

If the time allowance be sufficient there is no reason 
therefore to doubt the ability of Cohasset to rise, even 
to the extent necessary in order to expose the granite 
which was made miles deep. 



I A HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

All the superimposed rock must have been worn off at 
a rate less than one one-hundredth part of an inch each 
year in order to lose two or three miles of it in twenty 
five million years. 

The oxygen and other gases of the air are continually 
decomposing even so solid a rock as granite. The frost 
gets its teeth between the crystals and bites off pieces. 
The rain soaks into it and softens it and the sun blisters it. 
Every stream of water that has a particle of mud in it 
is scurrying away to the sea with tidbits stolen from the 
hills. 

All they need to have carried or corroded each year for 
twenty-five million years is the mere thickness of a hair 
in order to have scoured off two or three miles of rock 
from the top of our granite. 

But the rock which lay on top was not so stubborn and 
hard as our granite ; and it probably surrendered to the 
army of destruction much more rapidly than our granite 
ledges are decaying. 

Besides the slate already referred to, there were layers 
of pudding stone. These layers of conglomerate were 
nothing but stones and sand and clay which were hardened 
into rock by layers of lava that oozed out time and again 
from beneath, through cracks in the crust. 

It is quite plain that the granite must be very much 
younger than the rock under which it formed, because 
that rock had to accumulate to a great thickness before 
the granite could begin. The first layers were under 
water, and were deposited just as clay and sand are now 
deposited, from farther inland upon the sea bottom, what- 
ever that was; and it hardened into rock when there was 
enough of it to press hard or when other formations 
pressed it down where the internal heat could affect it. 

The effect of this internal heat was enough to destroy 
wholly the sea bottom upon which the Cambrian slate 
was deposited. 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



15 



In fact, it is suspected by geologists, for example, Pro- 
fessor Crosby, that our granite may be made up of some 
of that sea bottom melted over and metamorphosed. 

There was plenty of time and plenty of heat and plenty 
of moisture and plenty of pressure down there. 

For years and for ages the process of granite forming 
was continued. The grains of quartz and feldspar and 
hornblende, so distinct as to give meaning to the name 
granite (grain rock), came into shape very slowly. For 
many years the heat remained about the same, and the 
little molecules of each kind of mineral clubbed together 
by a mutual affinity so that there were enough to form 
quite a respectable crystal of each before the whole cooled 
off and so put a stop to their gathering. 

The feldspar seems to have got the start of the others 
and assembled in groups according to the law of its 
crystallization, with good square corners a quarter of an 
inch long, and longer in many cases. The black horn- 
blende was gathering at the same time, and there were 
many cases where a few molecules could not reach a 
larger group of their own companions because of the feld- 
spar that surrounded them, and they had to form their 
little crystals inside of the others. The quartz had to take 
what room and shape there was left for it, in spite of the 
fact that it was so bulky. It forms what is called the 
magma for the other crystals, instead of taking the beau- 
tiful shape of a six-sided prism and pyramid such as free 
quartz naturally assumes. 

Inside of this quartz are cavities containing water, 
invisible to the naked eye, so small as to number a thou- 
sand millions to one cubic inch in some places. 

There are several other minerals to be found in small 
quantities mingled with these three fundamental constit- 
uents. 

Scales of mica, both white and black, are found in 
places ; little cubes of iron pyrite are so plentiful in some 



1 6 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

places as to color the granite red by rusting, as may be 
seen anywhere upon our rocks where the sea washes 
them. 

The soda and the potash are less important. In fact, 
the rock which is called granite has so many accessory 
minerals besides the principal three that Zirkel, the min- 
eralogist, has counted as many as forty-four. 

In the Whitney farm near the race track there is a 
granite ledge which has become rotten by the rusting of 
the iron in its crystals of black mica. The red sand of 
this rotten granite has been used upon some of Mr. 
Whitney's private roads. 

In different places of the town one can see that the 
quality of the granite changes considerably. That, for 
example, which may be seen in the great ledge at the 
head of Depot Court has crystals very indistinct, much 
of it with no crystals, just masses of felsite ; while there 
is a ledge in Beechwood where the crystals are so large as 
to be called giant granite or pegmatite. This ledge is on 
the west side of Bound Brook (see the map), a few hun- 
dred feet from the schoolhouse, and is approachable from 
Doane Street. The surface of the rock in places has 
cavities shaped like the apex of a quartz crystal — three 
broad sides and three narrow ones — some of the cuplike 
places being as much as six inches in diameter. Instead 
of the hornblende which is a principal elerhent of our 
quartz everywhere else, there is silvery mica here in thin 
scales. This ledge is called The Reach, because it extends 
so far out into the meadow and is one of our natural 
curiosities. 

Between the two extremes of granite there are many 
intervening grades of coarse and fine grains. It is rather 
lighter in weight than Quincy granite ; for a good speci- 
men of the latter has a specific gravity of 2.669, while 
this of ours is only 2.633. 

Neither is it so valuable for building as the Quincy 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. I 7 

granite, because the cleavage is very poor ; it tears apart 
irregularly when blasted instead of splitting in smooth 
lines.* The poor splitting quality may be accounted for 
partly because this granite was disturbed too much while 
cooling. In some places it appears to have been pushed 
and twisted and kneaded while it was in process of 
crystallizing. In some of these snarled masses while the 
crystals were being formed they were drawn into shapes 
like the coils of candy. A pretty specimen of this flow 
structure is to be seen in a loose bowlder on South Main 
Street, about three hundred yards before reaching the 
Scituate line. Other cases are to be seen in the freshly 
blasted ledges along both sides of Jerusalem Road where 
it skirts the north shore of the town. 

While these crystals were forming into phalanxes, there 
was a choosing of sides that continued apace. The quartz 
kept moving towards the lower and hotter portions of the 
pasty mass, while the hornblende and feldspar gathered 
most thickly towards the outside or upper part. The result 
is that there are three grades of granite to be seen. now 
in Cohasset. The most plentiful is that middle kind 
which is a fairly even mixture of quartz and feldspar with 
a little hornblende. 

It is light gray or pinkish in color, with larger crystals 
generally than those of the darker granite which formed 
above it. In the outer or darker granite there is much 
more of hornblende and mica, with much less of the 
quartz. The crystals of hornblende and of feldspar can- 
not show so prettily because of the lack of quartz. 

The third or inner sort of granite is not very visible 
because only a little has ever come up to daylight. That 
little has come up through the cracks in the other and 

* John C. Howe, ten or more years ago, opened a quarry on the southwest 
side of Town Hill, to get some stone for foundations and walls ; but the work was 
very difficult. Another was worked for a short time, fifty years ago, on the shore 
north of Sandy Cove. Still another has been pointed out to me in the woods a 
quarter mile west of Atlantic Avenue, back of Nathaniel Treat's home. 



1 8 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

appears to have only a beggar's portion of the hornblende 
or mica, and the crystals are very fine. These veins of 
number three granite are sometimes as thin as a knife 
blade and never larger than a few feet. There are some 
outcrops exposed by blasting at the roadside of Beech- 
wood Street near to the lane which leads to Turtle Island. 

Another exposure is on Atlantic Avenue near the 
Lothrop House ; while there are many veins of it to be 
seen in the rock along the edge of the sea. 

While this third granite has never come to the daylight 
except through narrow fissures, the outer granite has been 
very much worn off so that only patches of it here and 
there are to be seen. Some of it is in the ledge at the 
head of Depot Court, and above it in Deacon Bourne's 
Rock. There is one ledge that is perhaps the most pictur- 
esque in town, composed of this first granite. It is called 
Rattlesnake Den, a frightfully shattered crag of rock thirty 
feet high and one hundred feet broad, lying in the deep 
woods half a mile west of Lily Pond. 

All along our north shore at the water side of Jerusalem 
Road this dark-colored, finely crystalline granite prevails; 
and it is along this exposure of rock that the flow struc- 
ture spoken of above is repeatedly to be seen. 

These three kinds of granite grade into each other, and 
some pieces are not plainly differentiated. Outside of 
them all was a coating or scum of rock that cannot be 
called granite because it lacks the quartz. Its main con- 
stituent is feldspar, but not the same kind as makes the 
beautiful milky crystals in the granite, being oligoclase in- 
stead of orthoclase. 

The name of this rock is diorite, and its color is a dark, 
dirty green. Streaks and strings of feldspar are snarled 
around in its dark mass. Not very much of it has been 
left on top of the granite, for the erosion of millions of 
years has nearly banished it from Cohasset. 

Just east of Kimball's Hotel there is a knob of it washed 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 1 9 

by the sea. Patches are to be found along Nichols Ave- 
nue on both sides. Some is on Beach Island, near Brush 
Island. It crops out of the side of Kent's Rocks at the 
Cove. Widow's Rock, on the southeast side of Beech- 
wood Street, a few hundred yards from King Street, is an 
outcrop of diorite. There is a ledge of it near the foot of 
Turkey Hill, where the stone crusher has been munching 
it to make roadways for men so many millions of years 
since nature made it in the bowels of the earth. 

It will be observed by close inspection that the patches 
of diorite are enclosed usually in the first or outer granite. 
In some cases there are lumps of it like plums in a pud- 
ding ; and they bear the appearance of having been frag- 
ments broken and mixed into a plastic magma. The cor- 
ners are melted off, and the pieces are seen arranged 
lengthwise with the flow structure. These pieces and 
patches of diorite are accordingly the first formed of all 
the rock our town affords. Nothing is older ! A man 
who stands upon a mass of it has for his support the most 
venerable of all nature's traditions in Cohasset. This dio- 
rite and these three kinds of granite compose all the solid 
rock of Cohasset, with the exception of the black dikes, 
which are to be described presently. 

They are called plutonic rocks, because of being formed 
so deep down beneath the surface of the earth, where 
Pluto was fabled to have fashioned things in nature's 
smithy. 

They are also called igneous rocks, because they were 
formed out of melted stuff. Some kinds of granite are 
said to have been formed by the slow changing of crystals 
without any melting, from some sedimentary rock like 
schist or gneiss ; but the granite of Cohasset was un- 
doubtedly crystallized from a molten mass. 

Other localities, Hingham and Weymouth and Brain- 
tree, to the west of us, have great ledges of shale or slate 
or conglomerate that are neither igneous nor plutonic, 



20 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

but sedimentary rock laid down by the action of water, 
while our distinction in the geological world is the pos- 
session of plutonic igneous rocks in such mixtures as to 
show their typical relations to each other. 

The behavior of these kinds of rock while they were 
hardening from the plastic stuff has been partly intimated. 
In the course of a million years, more or less, these hard 
rock beds that were spreading underneath all the eastern 
part of New England, nobody knows how much farther 
inland or out under the Atlantic, were stiff enough to 
crack. The third kind of granite has already been 
accused of thrusting itself up through the cracks in the 
others ; but there was a much more serious amount of 
cracking later on. Earthquakes were more in earnest in 
those days, and a movement of the granite rock next to a 
crack would sometimes shove one side up and the other 
down so that the crystals which were broken apart by the 
crack would become separated many feet from each other 
without opening the crack. These cracks or faults, as 
they are called, could be detected very easily in rocks 
that have layers and streaks in them ; but our granite is 
so evenly mixed and colored that one is never sure 
whether the crystals on the opposite sides of a crack 
were originally neighbors to each other or dwelt far apart. 
But of this we are sure, that the cracks were as many as 
thousands running in every direction through the granite 
which afterwards became Cohasset. 

Some of these cracks were used long afterwards by 
nature as vents through which the lava from beneath 
oozed up. As the granite, all under the New England 
coast, was being wrinkled or humped up by one of those 
movements of the earth's crust which strain our imagina- 
tion now as they always have strained the rock, some of 
these cracks were opened, and filled with lava forming 
dikes. 

Upon one occasion, perhaps millions of years after this 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



21 



granite had been hardened and pushed part way up, there 
was a belching of lava from a vent near what is now our 
northern water line. 

A part of the stuff that came up forms now the island 
called Black Rock. It is porphyrite, a dark colored rock 
with white crystals of feldspar scattered through it. All 
along that northern shore there are cracks filled with the 
same lava called porphyrite dikes. Seventeen of them can 
be counted between Green Hill Beach and Pleasant 




Photo, OctaTiU6 Reamy. 

Great Diabase Dike, Jerusalem Road at Cold Spring. 
A vein of lava thirty feet thick. 1 he lines show the wails of the dike. 

Beach. The thinnest of them measures about one foot in 
width. 

All these dikes are worn off flush with the granite, and 
nobody can guess how much higher the lava had to flow 
before it reached the surface as that surface was when the 
lava belched forth ; furthermore no one knows how much 
of it spread thickly over the top. 



22 HIS'J'ORY OF COHASSET. 

But this was not the only catastrophe of earthquake 
and lava. 

Another came many years, perhaps a million years later, 
and it pushed up a different sort of lava, through cracks 
running nearly at right angles with the porphyrite dikes. 

These are the east and west dikes of diabase. One 
can easily feel sure that they came long after the porphy- 
rite dikes, because a certain one of them cuts through a 
dike of the earlier set. There may be many more 
instances where the diabase dikes cut the others ; but 
this one is easily seen on the north of Jerusalem Road 
in the notch of the shore near Cold Spring, where the 
biggest dike of the town, thirty feet thick, is exposed. 

The east and west diabase dikes are very plentiful 
throughout the town. Wherever ledges are exposed, 
there one is apt to see a streak of black diabase running 
through it from east to west. 

There is one about two feet thick in the ledge at the 
head of Depot Court near the engine house. 

Down by the Cove at the mouth of Gulf River there is 
a diabase dike of this east and west group which coincides 
exactly with the dam which is built there ; nature and 
man being of the same mind. 

There is another east and west diabase dike which is 
interesting enough to mention. It runs through Wind- 
mill Point, and being more brittle than the granite which 
encloses it, the waves have succeeded in tearing it all out 
by dashing stones against it. 

Any one who has a back yard big enough to enclose a 
granite ledge is apt to be the owner of one of these east- 
west dikes of diabase. 

Professor Crosby has counted forty of this series of 
diabase dikes, just along our shore from the beach at the 
foot of Forest Avenue around to the harbor. They vary 
in thickness from one foot to thirty feet. 

The largest is at the north side of Jerusalem Road in 



MA KING THE ROCK BOT TOM. 



23 



the notch which has been worn into the shore at the Cold 
Spring opposite the Kendall estate. 

There are some of this east-west system which burst 
through the rock at a much later date than most of 
them, and these have had to cut through the earlier ones 




I'hoto, Octavius lUainj . 

Gap on Windmill Point where a PoKiiiVKUE r)iKK has been 

WASHED OUT. 

wherever their paths crossed. Their general direction is 
somewhat south of east, while the older ones trend to the 
north of east, — one on the east end of Pleasant Beach as 
much as twenty-five degrees north of an east line. 



24 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



An impressive example of these two distinct series of 
east-west dikes is to be seen exposed on the easterly end 
of Beach Island, near the outlet of Little Harbor on the 
sea side of the island. One dike about three feet thick 
has been cracked lengthwise irregularly, and another dike 
about one foot wide has crowded its way up through the 
first ; so that although they are both diabase and both 
running in the same general direction, the smaller is 
plainly a later eruption than the other. 

There was still a third and later eruption of lava through 





The Dike at White Head. 

our Cohasset rocks. Whether it came as long after the 
others as hundreds or even thousands of years there is no 
way of knowing. 

The direction of these last is about north and south, and 
Professor Crosby has counted ten of them between the 
Black Rock House and White Head. 

The most notable of all these- is the familiar one on Lit. 
tie White Head. Sailboats going into the harbor are in 
easy sight of it. The countless picnics of our summer 



MAKING THE KOCK BOTTOM. 25 

days bring many children to clamber over it in different 
places. It appears so black in contrast with the white of 
the granite that it is probably one of the places where 
Captain John Smith mistook our diabase for slatestone 
when he came — the first white man — into our harbor in 
the year 1614. 

This dike is a little puzzling to classify because it trends 
so much toward the east as one follows it into the main- 
land that it seems almost a member of the first system of 
east-west dikes. 

In that case the part exposed on the side of Little White 
Head is a wandering crack that missed its direction in- 
stead of a regular member in good standing of the later 
north-south system. 

Another north-south dike is worthy of special mention, 
because of the interesting way in which it cuts a porphy- 
rite dike at a place near Jerusalem Road a half mile east 
of Forest Avenue. 

" The diabase dike advances obliquely from the south 
until it strikes the cast wall of the porphyrite dike, follows 
this wall for twenty-five feet, amputating a branch of the 
porphyrite dike, and then passes in a graceful double curve 
diagonally through the latter and follows the west wall as 
far as either can be traced, — twenty-four feet. The inter- 
secting dike is a typical example of the third system of 
diabase dikes — black, brownish-weathering, and beauti- 
fully cross-jointed." * 

All these dikes along the shore have been kept clear of 
debris and are easily studied on that account, but these are 
by no means all of the dikes that have filled the cracks in 
our granite as the lava was being upheaved. 

How many more there may be inland, covered by the 
soil, it is hard to conjecture. In fact, they are more apt to 
be hidden than the granite, for they were more easily worn 

* Quoted from Professor Crosby's Geology of Boston Basin, Vol. I, Part I, Xan- 
tasket and Cohasset, p. 128. 



2 6 ///-V TOR V OF COHA SSE T. 

away, and their cavities have been filled by soil that con- 
ceals them. In some parts of the woods or pasture lands 
these black bands of diabase can be traced in straight lines 
for many hundreds of feet ; they disappear under the grass 
at the edge of one ledge only to reappear in the next 
ledge going straight on. In some cases the band of 
diabase grows narrower as it leads along, and probably it 
thins down to nothing a few hundred feet farther in that 
direction. 

In other cases they branch, making smaller dikes that 
continue to grow narrower. One of this sort is to be seen 
upon the east end of Beach Island, at the edge of the sea, 
a few hundred feet north of Cunningham Bridge. 

Besides growing narrower as one follows them horizon- 
tally, the dikes also become thinner at the surface than 
they are farther down. If more of them could be seen 
with a deep vertical exposure this fact would be better ap- 
preciated. As it is, perhaps the best example for observa- 
tion is that giant of all the east-west dikes at the notch 
on Jerusalem Road next to the sea where the spring is. 
There is a vertical exposure of about twelve feet at this 
notch in the shore, and the dike is seen to be several feet 
broader at the bottom than at the top. How much wider 
it gets to be farther down no one can tell. Hundreds or 
perhaps thousands of feet farther down, where the lava be- 
gan to squeeze its way upward through the granite, the 
crack may have been widened to several times the thick- 
ness we now see upon the surface. 

It has already been noticed that the sides of these dike 
walls are not always exactly vertical. 

The first one of the porphyrite dikes at Green Hill 
Beach slants as much as twenty degrees towards the east. 
Three of the east-west diabase dikes slant or hade to the 
north about the same angle. Two of them are at the ends 
of Pleasant Beach, and one on the east end of Beach 
Island. 



MAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 



27 



But more than any of these, slants the familiar dike on 
Little White Head. From thirty to forty-five degrees 
away from the vertical, this vein of diabase hades towards 
the southeast. The extension downwards may change in 
direction in some cases, but in most of our dikes it is 
reasonable to suppose a straight course downward to the 
place whence the lava issued. The stuff of which this 
diabase, the youngest of all our solid rock, is made is 
nearly the same as that which made the diorite, the oldest 
of all our solid rock. It is principally triclinic feldspar, 
not the milky orthoclase, but the dark oligoclase. 

The similarity between this lava that came up last from 
beneath the granite and the diorite which formed first 
above the granite leads us to suspect that at one time the 
granite ceased forming for a time, say millions of years, 
beneath Cohasset ; and that the molten stuff rearranged 
itself again as before, with the triclinic feldspar and other 
basic minerals upon the outside, and the quartz or acid 
stuff beneath. 

So it happened that the feldspar when it was ready to 
harden into a second layer of diorite was heaved up 
through all the granite and through the first diorite, 
becoming dikes of diabase, and possibly overflowing on 
top in great beds of diabase. 

Subsequently the overlying beds of rock were worn off, 
and nothing is to be seen now but the narrow vertical 
vents hardened into dikes. What could have made the 
granite stop forming and at the same time could have 
stirred up a new mixture of molten stuff so that the feld- 
spar must gather as before at the outer part of it can be 
fairly conjectured. Waves of heat move no doubt from 
place to place within the earth, and remeltings with mix- 
ings must be continually taking place ; but the dikes are 
lying silent before any one who will hazard a guess. 

Besides the triclinic feldspar there are many other min- 
erals in small proportions within the diabase. Epidote 



2 8 HIS TORY OF COHA SSE T. 

and some chloritic minerals give the dark greenish gray 
color to the east-west dikes. Traces of iron are to be 
found in the diabase. In fact one of the dikes is so full of 
magnetic iron that the compass goes crazy over it. It is 
one of the east-west system, about nine feet thick, and is 
to be seen for three hundred feet at its outcrop a little 
east of the notch and spring before mentioned. 

Little cubes of iron pyrites are to be found in some, 
easily seen with a microscope. The diabase is about one 
seventh heavier than granite, one specimen having a 
specific gravity of 2.964. It is so very hard that the 
marks of a date, " 1816," upon a loose piece of it near the 
water at the Black Rock House, look as fresh as though 
cut within one year instead of eighty years ago. But it is 
more easily destroyed than the granite because it is so 
brittle and cleaves so readily into square blocks. The 
eruption of these dikes of diabase is substantially the last 
event of the history of Cohasset in the making of solid 
rocks. 

The process of erosion had long been at work scaling 
off the top, and it was continued without interruption. 

There was a series of movements in the solid rock after 
its formation that has deeply affected our present condi- 
tion. 

It is what the geologists call "faulting," the slipping 
up or down of adjacent masses of solid rock. Wherever a 
5teep, smooth wall of granite is to be seen, it is apt to be 
nature's mute confession of a fault or slip. That ledge 
may safely be charged with having been thrust upwards, 
or the part which is gone may have been dropped down- 
wards. 

This is not always the fair inference ; because sometimes 
a soft streak in the rock has yielded so much more rapidly 
to the teeth of decay that the hard part is left an abrupt 
wall. 

The story of slipping is told sometimes by the hard 



xMAKING THE ROCK BOTTOM. 29 

scratches that one piece has given to the other. In the 
center of the village on the east side of Main Street, within 
a hundred feet of the engine house, there are several of 
these scratched places on the ledge of rock within reach 
of every passer-b3^ The vertical marks show how the rock 
on the west side of that ledge — possibly acres of it under- 
lying the road and the railway station, that whole neigh- 
borhood — was dropped downward. At the same time 
the rocky ledge upon which the Grand Army Hall is 
perched was borne upward by the heaving crust of earth. 

There may be, indeed there must be, many other places 
in the cracks of our ledges where the scratches of faulted 
rock might be exposed if only a piece were to be blasted 
out to show it as in this case. 

Sometimes in cruising through the woods of our town 
men come to the abrupt wall that terminates a ledge ; and 
their guess is not very far from facts when they imagine 
that where the low bog now lies was formerly the solid 
rock that slipped downwards to accommodate the displace- 
ments of the earth's crust beneath. 

On the north side of the town next to Straits Pond, 
Jerusalem Road runs along the side of a granite wall that 
has lost all that used to belong to it upon the north, by 
a deep faulting. 

Just across the road from the granite ledge the rock is 
wholly conglomerate. Far down beneath the conglomer- 
ate rock Professor Crosby assures us that there is to be 
found the granite which used to be continuous with our 
northern wall of granite before Boston basin slumped 
downwards into the interior. 

The conglomerate, and all the lava that was poured out 
into this basin, is sadly jumbled and is faulted very much 
more than our Cohasset rock bottom. 

But the comparatively small amount of our faulting 
is enough to contribute a large degree of the beauty and 
the variety of our ledges and lawns. Our harbors, both 



30 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Little Harbor and the Cove, are the effects of something 
more than erosion ; the jolting of the adjacent masses of 
granite up or down until the stable equilibrium could be 
reached has given us much of our present topography of 
rock. 

This faulting, furthermore, accounts for our finding 
masses of diorite in some places to-day upon the same 
level with some batches of the second granite, notwith- 
standing the fact that this granite was originally many 
feet beneath every atom of diorite. 

The down-drops and the upthrusts have been ended for 
many thousands of years, and the rock bottom now 
spreads stiff and hard and immovable, except as it is 
settling in company with the whole New England coast. 

But the frost is still cracking the ledges where they 
protrude ; the rain and the pelting sunbeams are loosening 
the particles of rock ; the gases of the atmosphere are 
corroding the surface of the town everywhere ; yet the 
lives of men are so very brief that all these events are 
imperceptible in any generation. 

Nevertheless it is just these slow changes that have 
amounted to such a prodigious romance of the rock dur- 
ing the millions upon millions of years since the Cohasset 
foundation commenced its formation. 



CHAPTER III. 

HOW THE SOIL CAME, 

ALL the gravel and the clay and the loose stones that 
rest now upon the rock bottom of the town are 
very recent deposits. 

The story of the rock was told in terms of millions of 
years ; but the events that occurred in the making of our 
soil require only thousands. 

The hard granite rock received its uneven coating of 
soil, namely, its Town Hill, its Deer Hill, its Bear Hill, 
its James Hill, its Lincoln Hill, its Church's Hill, it 
Souther's Hill, its Joy's Hill, all its meadows, its Meeting- 
house Plain and its North End Plain — the hard rock 
received all these heaps of ground material less than a 
hundred thousand years ago. 

It came about through the gigantic efforts of a glacier 
which once formed all over the northern part of North 
America, and which remained upon it for most of the 
time until about seven thousand years ago, grinding up 
the rock like a huge mill and heaping its grist into the 
shape of hills and plains and meadows. 

The marks of it can be seen as clearly as human finger 
marks can be seen in putty or as the plow marks can be 
seen in a field. There are scratches upon the underlying 
rock in every part of the town pointing in a southerly 
direction, as the glacier moved. The gravel and clay hills 
of the town have all been stretched out in the same direc- 
tion with the scratches. The north sides of all ledges 
were rounded off and planed and scoured smooth by the 
movement of the ice against that side, with its pebbles 
and other fragments. 

More picturesque than any of these evidences are the 



32 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



perched bowlders that have been combed out of the mov- 
ing glacier by the peaks of many ledges, and are now 
poised, like the famous Tipling Rock, in scores of places 
just where the glacier left them when it melted away. 
There are few if any towns in the whole of North 
America that possess a greater variety of glacial phenom- 
ena than this one. Some sample of nearly all the opera- 
tions of a glacier is to be found here ; and the glacial 
story at this place is corroborated at different points all 
across, the continent north of Perth Amboy, N. J., and 
Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Even the upper part of Mount Washington had bowl- 
ders left upon it, says Professor Hitchcock, by this great 
ice sheet. 

Along the Atlantic coast the ice was so thick as to 
cover the highest point on Mount Desert Island, Me. ; 
so that Prof. George F. Wright assures us that " at the 
very margin of the ocean the ice must have been consid- 
erably more than one thousand five hundred feet deep." * 

To imagine Cohasset covered with a layer of ice a thou- 
sand feet in thickness requires an exercise of mind quite 
beyond the ordinary ; but every reputable geologist in 
our country would demand it of us, and we will be humble 
enough to let Nature tell her story. There are many liv- 
ing glaciers nowadays engaged in the same business that 
was so extensively carried on here ages ago. On the 
coast of Alaska, for example, there are not less than five 
thousand glaciers, great and small, according to the esti- 
mate of Mr. Elliott.t 

In Washington State there are several lying in the 
ravines about Mount Ranier and Mount Baker ; while 
even as far south as California, a little east of the Yo- 
semite valley, there is a group of sixteen perpetual ice 
streams. 

* Ice Age in North America, p. i66. 
t See Our Arctic Provinces, p. 19. 



HOJV THE SOIL CAME. 33 

The whole continent of Greenland, about sixty times 
the size of the State of Massachusetts, is now filled by- 
one vast bed of ice which is in many places more than 
two thousand feet deep, and is spilling out through the 
openings of the coast into Bafifin's Bay and the Atlantic. 
All these ice fields are doing the same things that were 
formerly done upon the northern part of the United 
States. 

Competent scientists are now studying them very 
carefully; and all their evidence brings an overwhelming 
conviction to those who for the last twenty-five years 
have been suspecting that the whole upper part of the 
continent of North America was at one time a field of 
moving ice. 

How it came to be so is now fairly well determined. 

Warren Upham, of the United States Geological Sur- 
vey, has clearly shown that the northern region of our 
continent was elevated before the glacial epoch as much 
as one thousand feet in some places above its present 
level. 

What heaving of the earth caused it may some day 
be guessed ; but the fact of it is affirmed by such careful 
students as Prof. George Frederick Wright and Prof. 
William O. Crosby and many others. 

This great elevation pushed the heads of the White 
Mountains so high into the cold that perpetual snow 
clothed them. That snow chilled the air so that the 
winter seasons grew longer and consequently a greater 
amount of snow and ice formed to be melted during the 
shortened summer. In the course of many years this, 
combined with other causes,* produced glaciers in the 
White Mountains as they now are in the Alps. 

* Mr. Upham calls attention to the fact that the Isthmus of Panama was not 
elevated until about the time of the glacial epoch, and says : " It may be true 
therefore, that the submergence of this isthmus was one of the causes of the 
glacial period, the continuation of the equatorial oceanic current westward into 
the Pacific having greatly diminished or wholly diverted the Gulf Stream, which 



34 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



These little glaciers joined forces in the valleys and 
moved on, growing larger each year because the summers 
were becoming less equal to the task of melting them. 
By the end of a few thousand years, the weather grew so 
cold all over New England that the trees were scrubby 
and hopeless, the animals had disappeared to the south, 
and the ice and snow inherited the land. Then followed 
a period of a thousand years or more when each summer's 
sun looked upon a field of arctic snow growing thicker 
each year where now New England blooms. 

Some snow melted, but the remnant each year was 
larger than the year before, and it kept building upward ; 
for the snow turned gradually to ice and much of the rain 
froze before reaching the ground beneath. The annual 
precipitation for this region is nowadays about forty 
inches ; so that if all the yield of the clouds for five 
hundred years became ice upon the surface of New 
England, the thickness would have been considerably 
• more than one thousand feet. At some period of the 
deposit this ice had to begin to slide, for the slope of the 
land towards the water made its footing insecure, and it 
was urged onward by the pressure of the mountain glaciers 
behind. But the ice froze to the soil beneath it, and its 
grip was made more secure by the freezing of whatever 
water might have percolated through the ground in the 
melting seasons, until the only way for the ice to move 
was by dragging the frozen soil. 

The movement was slow, but the grinding between the 
soil and the rock ledges was very fierce. By actual 
measurement, the great Muir glacier in Alaska, at a place 

carries warmth from the tropics to tlie Northern Atlantic and Northwestern 
Europe." — Appendix A in Wright's Ice Age, p. 584, Probable Causes of 
Glaciation. 

Mr. CroU's illustrious and elaborate theory that the periods of eccentricity and 
nutation of the earth constitute the main cause of the glacial epoch is not credited 
now by the leading glacialists of America. The glacier was one hundred thousand 
years too recent for that theory. 



HOW THE SOIL CAME. 



35 



where it is about one thousand feet deep and about one 
mile wide, moved towards the sea forty feet per day on 
the average, in the month of August, 1886.* 

The grinding of rock into flour by a movement of forty 
feet per day under such a pressure as one thousand feet 
of ice would result in a huge grist if continued for several 
thousand years, as was undoubtedly the case at Cohasset. 

All the soil which existed in the town before the ice 
period must have been pushed into the ocean to the 
south, Professor Crosby assures us; but soil enough was 
being made by the glacier in places to the north of us 
that was destined to clothe our ledges which the same 
glacier had stripped. Our hills of hardpan are a witness of 
this reimbursement. 

But before relating the events of this reimbursement, 
there is to be noted a long period of scouring which the 
solid ledges nowadays tell to eyes that will observe. 

The earth and stones, frozen to the bottom of the 
glacier as they were sliding over the solid rock, made 
grooves and scratches, much as a piece of sandpaper 
does upon smooth wood. 

Uphill along every stoss slope of rock the sheet was 
pushed, and then bending down again it slowly conformed 
to the inequalities of the rock, rounding off edges and 
tearing off the lee sides. At the head of Depot Court, 
where the ledge toes the east side of Main Street, the 
horizontal marks can be seen by any passer daily, showing 
how the under side of the glacier bent around that ledge, 
scrubbing it clean and leaving the scratches. The marks 
at this particular place have been preserved by the dirt 
which undoubtedly laid against it for thousands of years 
before white men came. Wherever the rock' has been ex- 
posed to the weather since the glacier melted, all the 
scratches have been worn off by the destructive elements. 
Eut the appearance that all our ledges must have had 

* Professor Wright's Ice Age in North America, p. 51. 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 




HOJV THE SOIL CAME. 



37 



when the glacier left them is very clearly seen when the 
protecting coat of soil is removed, showing the smooth 
rounded hummocks. The making of roads and other ex- 
cavations have exposed the scratches in many places now 
to be seen. 

On South Main Street, the highest point of the ledge in 
front of Mr. Welch's stone wall, the lines are seen run- 
ning parallel with the road. Judging from the lichens that 
have grown in these marks, the protecting soil might have 
been removed at the very earliest period of white inhab- 
itants. 

Another exposure very recent is on Jerusalem Road 
within a few inches of the easterly wheel track on the 
summit that lies between the HoUingsworth and the 
Richardson estates. Again on Jerusalem Road near the 
Black Rock House and along the south side of Straits 
Pond the marks are to be seen. On Cedar Street, where 
the road was widened last year, some clear glacial striae 
were exposed to the eye upon both sides of the road in 
several places. Where they have scratched across a dia- 
base dike by the edge of this road the lines are beautifully 
clear cut. 

But further enumeration is needless, for any man may 
find them in his own dooryard by peeling off the garment 
of soil. 

The stones which did the scratching can be captured, 
many of them, in the gravel and hardp^n, those that did 
not have time to escape to the sea. 

One huge graver is now a perched bowlder, Bigelow 
Bowlder,* standing exactly in his last grooves on the ledge 
a half mile west of King Street at Sohier. 

By crawling under it one can place his hands in the smooth 
grooves just as they were left seven thousand years ago. 

*This bowlder has been known by the inhabitants of King Street as Tipling 
Rock; but the Committee upon Town History has named it after the writer, to 
avoid confusion with the Tipling Rock in the Wheelwright estate. 



2 8 HISTORY OF C0HASSE7: 

Most of the scouring was done by smaller stones which 
were themselves scratched, sometimes on both sides, as 
they moved endwise more slowly than the mass above 
them. The marks are not so distinct upon pieces of gran- 
ite as upon the porphyrite or diabase, or especially upon 
the few fragments of slate. 

Frequently one of these graving stones may be found in 
stone walls where the hand of man has placed it on guard, 
but millions of them are lying yet untouched in the glacial 
till where they stopped their sliding. 

It is this till in the form of long rounded hills or drum- 
lins that must now be considered ; for these hills are the 
main part of the reimbursement for the soil that the glacier 
froze on to and carried away. Turkey Hill, Deer Hill, 
Town Hill, Reservoir Hill, and Church's Hill, in fact all of 
our hills, are the aforementioned drumlins. 

They are made up mostly of rock flour that has been 
scoured off and heaped up by the movement of the ice just 
as sand bars form in a river bed wherever the sand happens 
to lodge. 

When the Reservoir was dug, upon the top of Bear Hill, 
picks were necessary in loosening the clay because the ice 
had pressed it so hard in heaping it. Many stones were 
mixed in with the flour, some as large as a bushel basket, 
and were pushed along until their corners were scoured 
off and they were scratched into their present shape. 

The marks of this rough treatment are to be seen on 
many of them now, running lengthwise with the stone as 
they moved. Every loose stone originally was broken 
from some ledge, and was jagged or sharp cornered, but 
they are not so now, for they meekly submitted to the 
great grinder. 

A very interesting illustration of the crushing move- 
ment that made these hills has come to light in the dis- 
covery of some fragments of clam shells in one of them. 
When a well was being dug on the west side of King 



HOW THE SOIL CAME. 



39 



Street about fifty years ago at Charles Burbank's place, 
several pieces of shells were found sticking in the hardpan 
at a depth of twenty-five feet below the surface. The 
shells did not grow there, but were pushed there when 
the hill was heaped up, for there were no signs of a former 
sea bottom such as clams always inhabit. 

Hardpan, or glacial clay, was all around and above them, 
and hardpan reached at least twenty feet below the shells 




\ X / \ (Venus InercervaT'ia.) / / 

^v '\ (/enus "hlercevvaTi a) ' r\ \ .' ' 

s -^ / X UiuaKauo - ^' 

* ^ '>^ Gtuakauo .' ^x^ .'','' 

'C^ _.__--'' Sea Ciam """.-^■j? 

Half natural length. 

Shell Fragments found near King Street, twenty-five feet 
below the surface, in digging a well. 



to the bottom of the well. Three of the fragments are 
shown in the accompanying cut. The two smaller ones 
are the smooth round clam or quahog ( Vemcs mercenaria), 
about two and a half to three inches in diameter ; the 
larger one is the sea clam {Mactra solidissimd), and meas- 
ured originally five or six inches. 

It is easily seen that the thin margin of these shells has 
been broken off, for nothing but the heavy part, near the 
umbos, could endure the rough treatment when they 



40 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



were pushed out of their bed in Boston Harbor and 
jammed into a Cohasset hill. 

In several other hills or drumlins like the one men- 
tioned, which lie south of Boston Harbor, similar shells 
have been found, while in none of the drumlins north of 
Boston do they occur, — evidences unimpeachable of the 
glacier's violence. When these drumlins were deposited 
by the moving ice the under surface of the glacier must 
have been less cold than when it first froze into the soil 
and carried it away, else the drumlins themselves would 
have been frozen stiff and shoved into the sea. 

Indeed the very rock flour that made up these hills must 
have been collected by streams of running water beneath 
the ice, where stones grinding upon stones made the flour, 
but could not heap it into such clean masses of clay as our 
present hardpan hills. In living glaciers nowadays sub- 
glacial streams are seen issuing from beneath the ice, 
murky white with rock flour, which they have washed out 
of the coarser grist under the glacier and are depositing in 
basins by millions of tons. 

Some of these particles have traveled in the dark sub- 
glacial channels for many miles. It is probable that in 
our own hills there are many particles from the White 
Mountains. 

On the hill where the almshouse stands, called Scituate 
Hill by the early Hinghamites because it lay on the trail 
towards Scituate, but now renamed Town Hill, a well was 
dug in the barnyard some fifteen years ago ; here, at the 
depth of about twelve feet, the men found a streak of blue- 
black dock mud, about as thick as a hand, with some 
small spiral shells or whelks in it broken into bits. The 
same kind of hardpan is beneath as that above, and it is 
possible that this hill was half made when a period of 
warmer weather left time for mud to accumulate in Boston 
Bay again with its shells ; and then the glacier froze into that 
layer of mud and pushed it along as a bottom crust. It is 



I/Oir THE SOIL CAME. 



41 



conceded among glacialists that there was a long interim 
of thousands of years between the first ice period and the 
second. If this almshouse dock mud is an evidence of 
that glacial interim, it adds another item of lasting interest 
in the formation of our town. 

Another important glacial enterprise was in progress 
at about the close of the drumlin formation ; it was the 
digging of potholes in the rock. All glaciers have streams 
of water upon their tops, and some of these streams, find- 
ing cracks in the ice where it bends over steep ledges, 
pour into these crevasses and bore large holes, or moulins, 
to the bottom. If any stones are washed in, and plenty of 
them are mixed into any glacier, these stones will whirl 
like a mill-wheel, wearing holes in the rock. In any moun- 
tain stream where the water falls fiercely these potholes 
can be seen in progress. The so-called " Indian Pot," on 
the east side of Rice Island in Little Harbor, was formed 
in this way. The prettiest of the group nestles at the 
edge of the water, drinking the tide over its rim. More 
than thirty-five gallons it holds, and the rim of it narrows 
in as smoothly as a round iron kettle. 

On one side, above the rim, the rock is hollowed out 
upwards about four feet, showing how much deeper the 
original hole was. The rock that formed originally the 
south side of the great hole was torn off and pushed away 
into the harbor as one of the last deeds of violence by the 
glacier. Two more holes were spoiled by that fracture, 
and their remnants are only one-sided hollow places a 
few feet above the Pot. 

About one hundred feet north of these, upon another 
rock scarp, is a larger hole called " Indian Well." Like 
the Pot, it is perfect only at the bottom, with one side 
extended upwards ten feet. The south side of this Well 
must have been torn off long before the water ceased to 
flow, because the rounded edge where the water swirled 
out of the Well is very much worn. 



42 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



Besides these four, there are other fragments of pot- 
holes, or perhaps embryo ones, lying between, about 



1 

i 






/ 


/ 

i 

1, 


■■1 


^ K 


^^^^^S^ '-r^^H 


l^m^^ 






w^KKk^jwKtKtKKL 




IBIHBHHHIWa£.&»ii» 


magBteJi 



Photo, M.H. Reamy. 

Indian Pot, Rice Island in Little Harbor. 
The seaweed at the water's ed^e. 



twenty feet from the Pot. The upper one is shallow like 
the bowl of a spoon, about a foot wide. Two others 



HOW THE SOIL CAME. 



43 



below are connected with it by a rounded channel. All of 
these potholes were formed by water from the same 
glacial stream, catching stones or pebbles and whirling 
them so that they ground off particles for the water to 
carry away. Many stones were worn out in the task, but 
at least one of them remained in its place for about seven 
thousand years for men to witness it. This was taken 
out of the Pot by some one, and is now in the possession 
of Charles S. Bates. It is a typical pothole bowlder 
about four inches in diameter, of granite, worn very 
smooth and round by much rolling. In other parts of the 
town similar cavities have been dug. 

One of the most famous is the "Devil's Armchair," 
only a foot across and nine inches deep. It is to be found 
south of Beach Street on the highest part of the ledge, 
two hundred feet back of Daniel Tower's home. A 
smaller hole two feet below the chair is called the "Heel 
Print," and a smooth channel connects them running, as 
in the other cases, southeasterly. Government Island has 
two more of these hollows, very shallow, side by side on 
the southeasterly shelf of its rock, called "Adam's and 
Eve's Seats " ; while another cavity, called a " Footprint," 
is just behind, about one rod to the west. 

How many more of these interesting formations are 
covered by the soil it is hard to estimate. There is one 
more important one, near the Black Rock House, on a 
bare surface of granite sloping down to the sea, only two 
or three feet above high tide. It is a pear-shaped basin, 
thirty-three inches by forty-one inches in diameter and 
eighteen inches deep at one end. 

After the formation of these potholes the great ice 
sheet must have drawn its long labors to a close. Its 
movement ceased, and all the bowlders which had been 
pushed along from the direction of Hingham and Hull 
stopped their pilgrimage to rest upon the ledges where 
they now are. The most famous of these is Tipling Rock, 



44 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



perched upon a ledge in Edward Wheelwright's estate, 
about a half mile west of Jerusalem Road at Bow Street, 
and a half mile north of Main Street at Albert S. 
Bigelow's driveway. It greatest length is twenty feet, 
breadth twelve feet, and height twelve feet. A rough 
estimate of its volume is over i,ooo cubic feet. Count- 




Photo, M. H. Reainy. 



TiPLiNG Rock. 
Estate of Edward Wheelwright. 



ing its specific gravity 2.633, o'" 164.5 pounds to the foot, 
its total weight is about ninety tons. All this weight 
rests upon a few inches of the ledge, giving it an unstable 
appearance, which accounts for its name ; but many have 
tried in vain to tip it. 



HO IV THE SOIL CAME. 



45 



The largest perched bowlder of our town is about a 
half mile south of the almshouse, and a half mile west of 
King Street, at the point where Sohier Street ends. 

It has been named Bigelow Bowlder, weighs twice as 
much as Tipling Rock, and it rests upon two points with 
its under side so bent up as to allow a man sufficient room 
to crawl under, where the glaciated surface of the ledge is 
as smooth to the touch as when the bowlder first glided to 
its place. 




Photo, M. H. Keamy. 



Bigelow Bowlder. 



The largest glacial traveler in the town, resting on a ledge half a mile west 
of King Street, from the head of Sohier Street. 



Bigelow Bowlder is granite, as all the large bowlders 
are ; but there is a little bowlder of conglomerate, about a 
cubic yard in volume, only twenty feet to the southeast. 
This piece of pudding stone must have been torn from 
some ledge outside of Cohasset, for this town has no such 
ledge. The nearest one, in Hull, in the direction of the 



46 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



glacial movement, is in the vicinity of Straits Pond, two 
miles away. 

If this block of conglomerate and Bigelow Bowlder 
were traveling companions, Hull, or perhaps Hingham, 
might have been the origin of both ; but if the big bowl- 
der was later in getting started or slower moving, because 
the ice could n't drag it as fast as its own movement, or 
if the big bowlder came to a stop sooner than the other, 
then the big one may be a Cohasseter, while the little one 
is from Hull. Here they have been dwelling together 
for about seven thousand years. 

There is another notable 
bowlder about a half mile 
south of Bigelow Bowlder, 
on the left of Howe's 
Road as one goes towards 
the stone bridge, about 
one hundred and fifty 
feet from the road. It is 
called Rooster Rock, be- 
cause it is perched five or 
six feet high upon the top 
of another bowlder. One 
edge is propped up by a 
different kind of stone 
block, and a person won- 
ders how the block hap- 
pened to get in there just 
in time to keep the bowlder from toppling over into the 
valley below. 

This bowlder and its companions, originally joined, 
form now a group, with a circumference of one hundred 
and twenty feet. 

Another group, much larger and more famous, is about 
one hundred and fifty yards farther along the road and 
farther in to the left. 




Photo, M. H. Reamy. 

Rooster Rock. 
Southeast side of Howe's Road. 



HOW THE SOIL CAME. 



47 



It is Ode's Den, so called because one Theodore Pritch- 
ard, about seventy years ago, made his abode there under 
a large fragment of rock.* 

The whole group is over eighty feet across and one hun- 
dred feet long, stretched towards the south. The glacier 
tugged long at it, but the blocks could not be far separated. 

A really beautiful poising of a bowlder is to be seen 
farther on in the woods. It is Burbank Bowlder, two 
hundred yards from Rattlesnake Den, a quarter mile south- 
east of the Piggery, and a quarter mile north of Doane 
Street. It was in the old 
cart track near this bowlder 
that Ode's corpse was 
found. One must feel the 
delicacy of the bowlder's 
poise as he looks through 
to daylight underneath it, 
and sees the two points 
upon which its sixty or 
seventy tons are balanced. 

But the glacier did a 
much larger business in 
bowlders than we have 
room to enumerate, es- 
pecially in the rocky dis- 
trict to the west of Lily 
Pond. As many as twenty- 
five notable ones have been 
counted by the writer in that very limited district of the 
town. Elsewhere many are perched, and many more were 
deposited where the soil now covers them. 




Photo, M. H. Reamy. 

Ode's Den. 

Southeast of Howe's Road, near Brass 

Kettle Brook. 



* " Ode " was discouraged with life. He lost his home on Sohier Street near the 
present railroad crossing, and went to this Den, living upon such things as people 
gave him. In the latter part of the winter he was missed. One day in the spring 
when the snow was thawing, Isaiah Litchfield, sledding wood about a half mile 
south of the Den, suddenly came to a stop. The horse shied and would not go on. 
There lay the dead body of Ode Pritchard, partly exposed, in the icy ruts. 



48 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Lion's Den is perhaps best referred to as an event in 
the bowlder episode. It is made of rocks that are still in 
touch with the parent ledge, lying .southeast of Beach 
Street in the woods near Daniel Tower's estate. Just as 
Ode's Den, this has been a human resort, and several 
stone implements which were found there by some Co- 
hasset boys now living, prove that the Indians before us 
were indebted to the glacier's labors for their resort, or 
perhaps for their home. 




Photo, M. 11. Ream: 



BuRBANK Bowlder. 



About seventy tons weight. A glacial traveler now resting in woods east of 
Howe's Road, near Doane Street. 



In estimating how far the glacial bowlders of Cohasset 
have traveled, short distances of a few miles have the pre- 
sumptive favor. Indeed, not one of our Cohasset bowl- 
ders needs to be referred to a ledge north of Boston 
Harbor for its explanation. It was the underneath side of 
the glacier -that dragged these huge fragments from their 



I/OW THE SOIL CAME. 49 

ledges, and there the ice movement must have been very 
much slower than upon the top, just as a stream of water 
tumbles along the pebbles on the bottom sometimes not 
one hundredth part as fast as the bubbles are scudding 
upon its top. 

The bigger the bowlder the shorter its travels, is a fair 
rule for a guesser of the origin of our bowlders. Along 
our shore upon the beach there have been found some little 
pebbles of red felsite which came undoubtedly across Bos- 
ton Harbor from their ledge in Saugus, eighteen miles 
away. A darker kind of red felsite has been rubbed 
off from a ledge in Hingham near Bradley's Hill, and 
scores of the pieces have been lodged in Beechwood, 
five miles away, where they have been used in building 
stone walls by settlers who never suspected the origin of 
them.* 

The same kind of filching from the ledges of Hull, 
northwest of Straits Pond, and from Planter's Hill and 
other parts of Hingham has supplied us with pudding 
stones scattered at intervals over the town. No ledge of 
pudding stone exists in the town, save a small outcrop just 
at the edge of Straits Pond. 

Speckled pieces of porphyrite and fragments of slate 
from out of town were brought to us ; but nearly all of our 
large bowlders are homemade from granite ledges within 
a few miles or less of their present abodes. 

At about the same time when the bowlders came to a 
standstill beneath the ice, the ice itself grew weary of 
crawling. It lay deep and thick in every low place, while 
every high ledge over which it bent made cracks through 
it and hastened the sun's work at that point. 

For many dozens of years, perhaps hundreds, the 
separated fragments of the dying glacier lay melting 
between the ledges. They were covered with dirt which 

* Dr. Oliver H. Howe has noticed fourteen of these red felsite stones in the 
walls by the roads. He has carefully marked their positions upon a map. 



50 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



had been mixed * in the ice. This dirt was left by the 
melting ice, much as it is left upon hummocks of snow 
nowadays at the edge of the sidewalk when the clean 
snow has all been melted off. 

On the coast of Alaska, upon the top of the Malaspinat 
glacier, the soil is so deep that huge trees grow upon it. 
No casual observer would suspect that hundreds of feet of 
solid ice lie beneath. 

The sand and gravel which covered the patches of ice 
in the meadows of Cohasset played an important part in 
our history. It hindered the melting of the ice until 
the freshets of many years had heaped it and spread it as 
we now see it. 

For example, Little Harbor was all covered by a great 
irregular fragment of ice one hundred feet or more in 
thickness, so that the broad swift stream of water from 
the melting glacier farther inland heaped up against the 
western side of it that great bank which we now call 
the Ridges. The contemptible stream which has been 
dignified by the name of James River (properly James 
Brook) was immensely larger in the days of the dying 
glacier ; for the freshets of early summer were augmented 
by the rains and snows of many scores of years, hitherto 
kept in ice. This vigorous stream washed its way among 
the masses of ice, carrying small stones and gravel and 
sand into eddies or angles and bearing away the fine clay 
into the sea. 

This same stream was probably the one that had 
carved out Indian Pot years before when it flowed along 
in the same general direction upon the top of the glacier. 

What is now North Main Street was a part of this 

* Professor Crosby explains how this dirt got mixed into the glacier. It came 
originally in the bottom part of moving sheets of ice which were shoved up on top 
of the main glacier before the latter had got started in its movement. (Article 
upon Englacial Drift in Technology Quarterly, Vol. IX, Nos. 2 and 3, 1896.) 

tSee Wright's Ice Age, p. 600, Report of Mr. I. C. Russell's trip to Mount St. 
Elias, 1890. 



HO W THE SOIL CAME. 5 I 

broad river bed when the ice had been melted from 
beneath. 

One can easily see upon the map or upon the land 
that an eddy or corner must have been made by the edge 
of the rock along the north side of what is now the 
Albert S. Bigelow estate, and by the ice which lay in 
Little Harbor. In this angle were lodged thousands of 
tons of gravel by the stream as it swept around over what 
is now the town Common, past the ledge at Depot Court, 
and thence into the Cove. That the ice really did lay in 
Little Harbor, reaching a hundred feet or more in height, 
is proved by the great steepness of the banks of gravel in 
some places along the margin. Gravel cannot be made 
any steeper than it is just at the roadside in front of 
Albert S. Bigelow's estate. If it had been heaped up 
against a perpendicular wall more than fifty feet high and 
then the wall were taken away carefully, that gravel bank 
along the Ridges would not be steeper than it is now. 

The stealthy melting away of a wall of ice is the only 
explanation that Professor Crosby entertains for this 
gravel ridge. A similar explanation must be given for 
the steep point at the edge of Charles S. Bates' estate 
and for the other banks between. 

This story is still further corroborated by the punch 
bowls that are formed in the soil in this vicinity. 

The Punch Bowl proper is in the yard of James H. 
Nichols, at the head of Beach Street. It is a basin 117 
feet across, nearly round, and fifteen feet deep. It is a 
beautiful specimen of the work of a glacial stream in 
heaping gravel around a huge block of ice so that when 
the ice melts away the dirt caves in to form a gigantic 
basin. 

Meeting-house Pond is another such bowl, where a 
stubborn fragment of ice long stood resisting the genial 
sun. Farther up the stream in this long angle or eddy 
there were many more islands of ice, wHere now are Bates 



52 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Pond and those several deep holes west of the North 
Schoohouse. 

Another lies along the middle of Levi Tower's estate, 
and Green Street dips down into it between Sohier 
Street and North Main Street. People who climb the 
little steep in front of the Sohier estate on North Main 
Street are put to that trouble just because a large fragment 
of the glacier happened to stay unmelted at that hollow, 
when the soil was being spread by the glacial stream. 

Prof, George F. Wright, in his investigations at the 
Muir glacier, Alaska, caught one of these fragments of 
ice in the very act of making a punch bowl. The dirt 
which covered the little hill of ice kept sliding down to the 
edge as the melting progressed, so that there was nothing 
to be left in the middle when the ice should have 
disappeared. 

Wherever one digs down into the gravel anywhere in 
this region of North Main Street he can see how the 
water laid it in strata, some coarse, some fine, according 
as the successive seasons changed the rapidity and the 
course of the stream. One feels a shock of conviction 
upon seeing these sure signs of running water, added to 
the fact that all the fine stuff, like the clay, for example, 
has been carried off. The Edward E. Tower gravel bank 
on North Main Street is possible only because that glacial 
stream carried away thousands of tons of fine dirt, while 
the gravel was being left. Much of it may be lying now 
in the broad meadow where the Catholic Church stands, 
and much has gone to sea. 

This gleaning out has made good roads an easier matter, 
and has furnished excellent drainage for cesspools ; but it 
leaves the North End plains a poorer kind of farming soil 
than that which is upon the sidehills, the drumlins that 
have kept their clay. 

There is another important sand plain in the town made 
in a similar way, and furnishing another convenient site 



HO IV THE SOIL CAME. 53 

for a village. It is the region of Beechwood. This water- 
washed gravel and sand is heaped against the side of such 
drumlins as are in that region. 

Ledges are partly covered by it near the schoolhouse, 
and the valley of Bound Brook is more or less filled by it. 
One reason for the existence of Lily Pond is that the de- 
posits of the glacier have choked up the natural channel 
to the sea. It is a fairly safe rule, in the interpretation of 
nature's story, to regard what are now the low places and 
marshes as the spots where the ice lingered the longest 
when the great glacier melted away. 

Not many are the years since men have been able to 
read what nature has to tell of the ice age in this land. 
At first the romance was too large to be comprehended or 
believed by many ; but once having had their minds 
opened by the indisputable marks of a continental ice 
sheet, men who are familiar with nature's words have 
come to count the glacial period as no longer a theory, 
but a chapter, in the history of our land, most prodigious 
in its effect upon our human careers. 

Well pleased are we that the town of Cohasset has 
many beautiful specimens of the great glacier's work. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 

LTPON the bare rocks and the naked hills a garment of 
^ verdure was spread, after the glacier melted. The 
process of clothing Cohasset was very slow for many- 
years, because every cell and fiber of vegetation had to be 
made in its own place by the feeble germs of life in the 
face of great opposition. The hard rocks resisted every 
root ; the clay upon the slopes of every drumlin was baked 
hard by the sun or gullied by the rains to resist the en- 
croachment of vegetable life ; the salt air of the ocean 
and the lingering coldness of the glacial times added to 
the difficulties. But life is mightily persistent ! Even 
before the glacier died, plants of a very low order had pre- 
empted places for themselves upon the snow and ice. 

The red snow alga which is still to be seen in the arctic 
regions was spread like a fine red powder upon the snow ; 
and wherever any soil was exposed upon the ice or at the 
edge of the melting fragments, there was the alga mak- 
ing a red mould, just as it may be found nowadays some- 
times upon the wet ground of a cold spring day. 

Some higher kinds of alga had begun already their life 
in the salt water along our shore. They were the sea- 
weeds clinging to the rocks. The snow alga was a tiny 
globule, but the sea alga grew to be great ribbons waving 
in the tide or bunches of Irish moss carpeting the depths. 
The dark brown varieties gathered nearer the surface of 
the water than the pale Irish moss, where some of it even 
dares to be exposed to the sun for a few hours at low tide. 
The most plentiful of these darker algae is the bladder 
seaweed or rockweed that fringes the rocks near the low- 
tide mark. It is so named because of the little empty 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 



55 




Tip of one kind of rockweed, showing 

spore and air bladders, one half 

natural size. 



bladders in the stalks and 
the margin of its fronds 
helping them to float. 

But not all the bladders 
are empty, for the pimpled 
ones contain the spores, 
the most important part 
of the plant. When these 
little germ cells are let out 
they swim in the water 
until they collide with some 
hard substance, where they 
stick. They never travel 
again ; but in due time 
they develop into a thallus 
that becomes another sea- 
weed. 

A larger and more useful variety of these dark algae 
is the kelp which grows in deeper water, but reaches up its 
fronds on the top of a long stem to float in the swift cur- 
rents. The roots, which always grasp on stones or shells 
or anything solid upon the sea bottom, are not roots for 
supplying nourishment as the roots of trees, but only for 
holding their place. Their nourishment is absorbed from 
the water at any part of their surface. When storms roll 
heavy waves along the bottom at low tide, these over- 
grown algae are torn from the 
bottom and hurled up to the 
beach along with millions of 
rockweeds where men load 
them into carts for manure. 
For many years men have 
been fertilizing their farms in 
this town with seaweeds that 
are the direct descendants 
of the pioneer algae which 




A sac, with spores magnified loo 
diameters. 



56 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



came timidly to our rocks after the old glacier had re- 
treated. 

Another kind of lowly vegetation, so hardy as to be 
satisfied by a beggar's dole of nourishment, was gaining 
a settlement here at the same time with the alga. It 
was the tribe of lichens ! The air could carry the spores 




Photo, Octavius Reamy. 

Bladder Rockweed upon Windmill Point. 
Showing the Glades House through gap where a dike has been washed out. 



of lichens from places farther south where the glacier had 
not invaded or was sooner melted off, and even a rock 
was good enough for lichens to grow upon. Not a 
ledge in town and hardly a stone in our fields but bears a 
lichen whose ancestry might lead back through perhaps 
seven thousand years of Cohasset history. 

Some of it is in the degenerate form of hard, gray, 
pebbly skin upon the rock, scarcely distinguishable in 
many cases from the rock itself. Mere blotches upon the 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 57 

granite they grow, with widening periphery, some lighter 
and some darker in color. But there are nobler lichens 
than these crustaceous kinds. Some, instead of being 
pebbly, are scaly, and others even leafy in appearance. 
One of these large leafy varieties was found last winter 
(1896) which measured nine inches across the leaf. 

This one {Umbilicaria dilleiiii) was a brown leathery 
pad with a black under surface fastened flat to the rock by 
a short cord or umbilicus in the middle. They love damp- 
ness and pure air, avoiding the smoke of cities and the 
hot sunshine. The ledges of Cohasset which have a 
northwest exposure were early sought out by these 
humble plants where they might hang in pure air, being 
bathed by drippings from above. They asked no food 
from the rock, but only a place to hang out. 

Some of the larger ones are probably the most vener- 
able of all settlers ; for it is said that no lichen ever died 
of old age, and it may be that some of these now living 
could span a thousand years, so that no living thing about 
them can rival them for antiquity. 

Some of the lichens of these later days take the lead 
of all winter beauties. They are the brilliant red-orange 
patches upon the bark of trees Or upon the rocks. Hardly 
an elm on our streets but has for its adornment this touch 
of beauty, when colors are scarce and flowers have fled. 
This red kind {Theloschistes parietind) is contrasted often 
upon the same tree trunk with a rich brown lichen 
{Collcnia) and a gray lichen {Parmelia) and several other 
varieties besides mosses, making a brilliant spectacle of 
color even in winter. 

When the hot sun deprives lichens of their moisture 
they close up their pores, according to their immemorial 
custom, and wait for months if necessary until the drought 
is ended and their nutriment comes again. 

In the early post-glacial times, when other plant life was 
scarce, the lichens composed a larger proportion of the 



5 8 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

garment of vegetation than now ; but the number of 
lichens is probably greater to-day than it was then, for 
myriads of their spores now float in the air from scores of 
different varieties, while formerly only a few were floated 
to these barren hills. It is not improbable that the native 
Indians used Cohasset lichens to make paints, for the pig- 
ments of lichens have long been used by both savage and 
civilized men for dyes. 

Their utility for the land, however, is not to be com- 
pared with the usefulness of the mosses, which are next to 
be considered. 

The mosses are a step higher than lichens in their struc- 
ture and their reproductive system. They almost have 
roots, and their stems and leaves are nearly as respectable 
as those of a fern. However, they get their living, as the 
lichens and algae, not through the roots, but by absorbing 
it directly into the thallus. They can endure great cold, so 
they hesitated not to come in colonies while the glacier was 
lying in the swamps. The foggy atmosphere produced by 
the cold ice fragments in those days was just their element. 
They hastened to cover with velvet the clay hillsides, keep- 
ing them from being too rapidly washed by the rains. 
They caught the grains of soil which were loosened from 
the rocks, and built up a vegetable mould by their own de- 
cay which might produce higher plants. 

The work of the bog moss, for example, is shown im- 
pressively in a place near the Beechwood schoolhouse. It 
is the wet meadow that borders Bound Brook. Farmers 
have dug down through this peat as deep as six feet only 
to find the same dead moss all the way down. Indeed 
poles have been thrust down to a depth of eighteen feet 
through the soft bog. 

The moss is still growing at the top, while deep under- 
neath are the remains of what grew many hundreds of 
years ago. Beavers' homes are buried in the bog, and 
their teeth marks are still to be seen upon the ends of the 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 59 

bits of wood that they heaped up for their abodes ages 
ago. 

Some of these heaps which have been cut into by ditch- 
ing, measure as much as four feet high; but the moss and 
other material have grown up around them since they 
were made, building the meadow so high that the beavers' 
homes can be found only by digging through ancient peat.* 

Another impressive growth of moss, aided by various 
peaty accumulations, is tl;e bog which Doane Street crosses 
a few hundred yards before it reaches the Hingham line. 
The road kept settling down through the bog year by year 
as the gravel was carted on, and the county commission- 
ers found upon examination that this vegetable deposit was 
nineteen feet deep. Other swamps in the town have been 
built up in a similar way. If Breadencheese Swamp, for 
example, lying in Henry M. Whitney's estate in the north- 
ern part of the town, were examined, the work of mosses 
would be still further witnessed in the making of Cohasset. 

Very lively peat will grow as fast as a foot in a century, 
but ours may not have grown a quarter as fast. Neverthe- 
less, a very considerable amount of our good soil is the 
product of moss. 

The rich brown velvet and the spongy gray beds of many 
varieties are not merely to lend beauty to the woods, but 
to hold moisture and to furnish a fertile mould that will en- 
courage the seeds of higher plants in their sprouting days. 
There is a plant very closely allied to the mosses called 
liverwort, which grew in moist places, and which has been 
esteemed as a liver medicine because of the fancied re- 
semblance of its leaf to the shape of a liver. It is some- 
times called "scale moss" from the appearance of its 
leaves upon the stem. 

The most prized of all for human uses is the club moss, or 

* Ira B. Pratt has called my attention to these interesting heaps of sticks with the 
beaver teeth marks, many of which he has found while ditching near the Reach. 
The wood is all decayed and falls to pieces when exposed a few moments to the air. 



60 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

ground pine, which is gathered every year to make Christ- 
mas wreaths and festoons. 

In the coal beds of Scotland some fossil forms of these 
lycopods of gigantic size have been identified ; but the 
lycopods of Cohasset were the same small variety as 
now, in those early post-glacial days thousands of years 
before Christmas days or Christmas decorations were 
thought of. 

The coming of the ferns needed not to be delayed long 
after the mosses, for the rock fern buries its root snugly 
under them and sets up its business of weaving fronds and 
scattering spores for more vegetable growth. 

Brakes and maidenhairs and polypodies found the soil 
more congenial than the rocks for their growth. The ferns 
are the first we have yet considered which root themselves 
into the ground for nourishment. It was a new experience 
for the clay or rock flour of these drumlins when it first 
was wedged apart by the rootlet of a fern seeking the 
juices of life for its fronds. 

Undisturbed for many years, those heaps of rock flour 
had lain after the ice mill had made them. The gases of 
the air had been slowly reddening the clay and preparing 
it for vegetation. 

Now after the mould had formed upon it the spores of 
ferns, brought by the wind, could germinate there and grow 
into a little green scale wherever the dampness was right. 
On the under surface of these scales little hairs clutched 
the mould, and upon the upper surface grew little cells, 
some of which had the power to grow into a fern if they 
were touched by others of a different kind. When these 
"eggs" or "seeds" upon the top of the scale began to 
grow, then roots of the simplest order began to pierce our 
hillsides and plains. From that day onwards the drumlins 
and plains have been unable to shake off their garment of 
vegetation. The ferns have multiplied in as many as 
twenty different varieties. 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION: 6l 

They suck up the minerals of the soil to make stalks 
and fronds which die annually to enrich the soil for other 
plants. The roots live on for many years, transforming in 
this way the soil for a better vegetation. Since the small 
overtures of the first days, the continuous toil of the ferns 
has been so great that the many tons of earth transformed 
would be hard to calculate. 

All of these lower orders of plant life are propagated by 
spores, and it is easy to see how the winds would carry 
them each year a little farther towards the face of the re- 
treating ice sheet. Other plants of a higher order cast 
forth their seeds doubtless, upon the winds : but it is 
obvious that the lower kinds of plants would earlier get a 
footing in the cold new soil, because they were less fastidi- 
ous about their climate and their food. The seeds of 
grasses, for example, might have started northward at every 
fresh breeze of summer, but many thousands of them 
would rot in the cold moisture where the spores of the alga 
and lichen and moss and fern would be happy. 

Yet all of these low-grade plants, mean as the circum- 
stances are which they find endurable, thrive better when 
accompanied by the nobler kinds of vegetation. The 
fungus, for example, although next in order to the lichen, 
needs a rich deposit of vegetable mould, the corpses 
of a million generations of other plants, upon which to 
thrive. 

The puffball is one which grows now in Cohasset to an 
enormous size, two having been found in the year 1 896 which 
measured thirty-three inches in circumference. It is ob- 
vious that the early post-glacial times could not furnish so 
good conditions for the growth of this great fungus {Lyco- 
perdon gigantciivi). The funguses need such things as 
decaying trees or leaves to grow upon, and therefore 
they could not colonize in Cohasset until thick woods of 
long standing had been made. 

But how did the woods come ? 



6 2 HIS TOR V OF COHASSE T. 

Prof. Asa Gray * has given a convincing account of 
the retreat of the North American forest to the south be- 
fore the growing glacier, and of its return to its present 
state upon the departure of the glacier. How slowly the 
edge of the prehistoric forest spread towards the north 
when the arctic rigors retreated is left to be imagined. 

Each tree casts a myriad seeds ; some few take root. 
Perhaps a favorable wind might be able to bear a maple 
seed a quarter of a mile, or some gale of winter might rap 
a pine cone against a limb so as to loosen a seed that would 
sail even farther towards the barren hills. After fifteen or 
twenty years perhaps those seeds might have become trees 
large enough to send their progeny still farther pioneering 
towards the north. Steadily onward the vanguard of the 
forest made its way, while every shrub and vine and grass 
kept pace with the migrations, when a favorable wind 
could be chartered or some animal or bird induced to bear 
the seeds along. 

The pilgrims that came first to Plymouth, after Plym- 
outh Rock itself got pushed there, were the enterpris- 
ing trees from the south. Cohasset was reached not 
long after, and the plant settlement grew thicker each 
year upon the drumlins which had remained comparatively 
bare for perhaps several hundred years. 

The covering of pines and oaks and ashes and beeches 
and birches and savins was interlaced by witch-hazels and 
sumacs and laurels of shorter growth, and by the still 
shorter shrubs and by vines. The grasses were a very 
important textile in the garment of vegetation. There 
was none of the good fleshy English grass such as had to 
be imported for the cattle of our pioneer ancestors ; but 
even the wild grasses increased the fertility of the soil, 
and one kind of native grass, that gigantic variety known 

* Forest Geography and Archaeology, a lecture before the Harvard University 
Natural History Society, April 18,1878. Printed in American yournal of Scie?!ce, 
Vol. CXVI, pp. 85-94, 183-196. 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION: 63 

as Indian corn, or maize, was an extremely valuable prod- 
uct. The marsh grasses did some building of land much 
after the pattern of the bog mosses. At the mouth of 
Bound Brook as before noticed (page 13), all the salt 
meadows, including the Conohasset meadows of Scituate, 
have been built up in some places as much as three feet 
by the growth of grasses. Underneath this marsh, three 
feet or more below the present surface, is the original sur- 
face of clay as the glacier left it, with the roots of swamp 
alder still lying in it : the eelers find the roots sometimes 
to their grief in spearing under the edge of the channel; 
and before the tide gates were last put in at the Gulf 
bridge, the low tide left many of the roots exposed along 
the muddy banks. 

A shovelful of the marsh muck that lies on top of the 
original clay surface will show any one who examines it 
spears of gr-ass, besides the roots of grass. The first 
spears of grass lie flat upon the clay just where they fell 
hundreds of years ago. Their roots are still to be seen 
in the clay. As each successive crop of grass grew and 
fell over, uncut by any man, a slight coating of decayed 
grass lifted the next year's growth a little higher, so that 
at the end of many years the marsh has been brought to 
its present height above the original clay surface.* The 
slow subsidence of the land, spoken of in the first chapter, 
has facilitated the accumulations ; but the work has 
been done by the grasses. 

Another marsh, that of Little Harbor, has been built 
up in a similar way. Three or four feet below the muck 
at the foot of the Ridges, pieces of old logs and roots are 
to be found buried under the accumulations of decayed 
grass and other stuff. 

These logs are probably the remains of a growth of 

* William Veale, of South Main Street, who has dug through the marsh back 
of his house, has called my attention to these facts about the formation of the 
marsh. 



64 Ills TOR V OF con A SSE T. 

trees which existed at the place mentioned before the land 
subsided so as to let in the salt sea. But these accumula- 
tions of half-decayed grass with roots and particles of dust 
are possible only where there is sufficient dampness. The 
grass upon uplands never grew very much nor resisted long 
the forces of decay. Trees and bushes were more adapted 
to the conditions of upland life, and they were so greedy 
for sunshine as to lace their tops together, making a deep 
shade in most places, quite discouraging to the grass. 
Even trees of the dwarf kind were thus bullied out of 




Photo, Miss Annie Hartwell. 

Little Harbor from the Riin;i.s over the Savins. 

place. Along the bleak shore, where rocks were many and 
the soil scarce, the savin trees could get a fair chance with 
the sun ; but in places where big pines and oaks and many 
broad-leaved tall trees could grow, the sunlight was so 
monopolized that the little savins gave up the struggle. 

The climate is such in New England that the richest 
variety of trees in the world was here accommodated. 
The pine trees could endure the cold winters and the hot 
summers l)ecause there was a good degree of moisture fall- 
ing each year. 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 65 

The oaks and birches and beeches and hickories and 
chestnuts and many other trees with juicy leaves could 
flourish here, because the summers were so hot and moist 
that a large growth was made each season, before the bit- 
ing frosts could nip off the leaves. Too little moisture or 
long periods of drought cannot be endured by these trees. 
On the Pacific Coast, where the average temperature is 
much milder, these trees get far outstripped by the cone- 
bearing trees, because the summers or growing periods are 
so dry. These drumlins of ours, furthermore, are able to 
hold moisture on account of their clay, so that trees may 
flourish evenly throughout the summer. The great bright- 
ness of our summer days favors the growth of all our de- 
ciduous or falling-leaf trees, because it shines through the 
heaviest shade that the evergreen trees can make. In the 
British Isles where the fogs are thick, and so many days of 
summer are dark, nature, unaided by man, was never able to 
nourish so many varieties of deciduous trees as we have here. 

Our pine trees and spruce and hemlock and other coni- 
fers do not grow so large as the pines of Georgia or the 
spruce of Canada, but that gives all the better chance for 
the hard-wood trees. 

The fact is that nature has been very impartial here to 
the different families of trees, giving such a mixture of 
sunshine and showers, of heat and cold, of rocks and sand 
and clay, that at least seven different varieties of cone-bear- 
ing trees and over fifty of the other kind have flourished. 
Not in vain was this richness of variety, because it afforded 
wood for many different industries in this community before 
the railroads and other means of transportation brought the 
woods of many distant forests to the needs of every town. 

The oaks made good ship timbers, the pines good masts 
and good boards. The hickories made springy, tough axe 
handles and oxbows and chairs. The chestnuts and elms 
were good for cart making and other common uses. The 
little ash and birch trees were split for barrel hoops in the 



66 ' HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

days of fish packing. The walnut and the hornbeam and 
the beech and the maple have all been honored by special 
uses in the economies of a self-sufficient community. 

The trees which were standing here in a great virgin 
forest when first the Anglo-Saxon devastator landed, were 
the direct descendants of the first post-glacial comers ; 
but many generations of forest had lived and died. The 
oldest of trees did not reach perhaps more than three 
hundred years before some heavy storms or lightning 
strokes would take advantage of their decrepitude to 
shatter them. Then the mosses and lichens and funguses 
would creep upon their prostrate forms, and other roots 
of young ambitious trees would feed upon the relics of 
those patriarchs. Living and dying, each tree had its 
little romance. The living cast their seeds to make more 
life, and dying they left their richness to the soil. They 
protected each other from the winds, and all grew taller by 
the compact. They helped each other and they murdered 
each other. The grapevines would ask the privilege from 
some tree to climb up into the sunlight where its grapes 
might be held up to ripen ; but its broad leaves would 
take so much of the sun as to stunt the growth of its 
benefactor. The woodbines twisted upwards around some 
growing tree until the bark of the tree was no longer able 
to expand, and, choked to death, it fell a victim to the 
vine's embrace. 

Meanwhile the roots of all were feeling their way 
through the gravel and the clay, searching for moisture 
and for food. Those which felt among the rocks would 
sometimes wedge into a crack, and would swell by growth 
enough to loosen tons of granite from the ledges. Thickly 
intertwined both by roots and by branches was the fabric 
of vegetation. Like any garment, it was subject to the 
fretting of moths ; but its living energy repaired all waste, 
and it grew steadily thicker until the hand of man was 
set to its depletion. 



CLOTHED WITH VEGETATION. 



67 



A fair impression of the primeval verdure that covered 
these hills may be gained by a view from the top of Tur- 
key Hill across the billowy drumlins towards Bound Brook. 
Many shades of green are seen — the light-colored copses 
of young beech trees off to the right, the deeper green of 
the oak groves, and the dark patches of pine trees, and 
the thick stumpy savins clustered about the rocky ledges 
of the shore. No cultivated fields broke the view, all 
was a heaving sea of variegated green lying beside a 
heaving sea of blue, with the white spray dashing between. 

The principal difference between this and the original 
scene is in the matter of the pine trees. These were 




Photo, Miss Harriet A. Nickerson. 

The Pines— Howe's Road near Doane Street. 

probably much more plentiful at first than they are now. 
The plain where the town Common spreads, was covered 
says tradition by a dense growth of pines. The sandy 
knolls in the upper part of Beechwood, such as Barn Hill, 
were pine lands. Artificial selection is somewhat different 
from natural selection of favorites, so that elm trees have 



68 HISTORY OF CO II ASSET. 

now usurped the place of many of nature's evergreens 
throughout the village. The vines and underbrush have 
thrived in pastures where the shady pines have been cut, 
but they have lost their grip in places where men have 
taken a notion to uproot them. 

The Indians formerly burned the horsebriers and the 
roses and the bayberry and raspberry and blackberry in 
order to make for themselves pathways and cornfields, and 
the hands of white men have been even more ruthless; 
but these vines and shrubs have adopted the stone walls 
for their friends, and by their protection they thrive and 
fill the air with fragrance. These small members of the 
vegetable kingdom have been the benefactors of men. 
The berries have fed many an Indian, perhaps many a 
bear. The bay berries of later date made candles. The 
swamp milkweed was the hemp for Indian fish lines and 
fish nets. Many other uses, besides gratifying the sense 
of beauty, were subserved by these minor strands in the 
fabric of nature. But all of nature's products are interest- 
ing for their own sakes. The life fortunes and mishaps of 
a single tree are sometimes romantic ; much more so are 
the complex events of a myriad forms of plant life. 
Through seven thousand years of their struggle for exist- 
ence they have been weaving the superb garment of ver- 
dure that adorns the hills of this New England sea town. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE ABORIGINES. 

HITHERTO our story has been the annals of nature, 
but now begins the narrative of man. Savage man 
made history here for centuries, and probably for thou- 
sands of years, before a white face ever peered into a New 
England forest. 

It has pleased the Anglo-Saxon immigrants to call the 
aboriginal dwellers savages ; but the Anglo-Saxon ances- 
tors in Europe were just about as savage as the Indian 
forbears of New England. 

The higher the reach of civilization above savagery, the 
more impressive is the fundamental sameness of human 
nature under all its garbs. 

The prehistoric human life of Cohasset is a part of the 
great hidden drama of man, which was being enacted here 
for several thousand years after civilization had begun 
about the Mediterranean Sea. The records of that abo- 
riginal life are as wordless as nature's, but they can be as 
clearly read as nature's were. 

The romance of the rocks was read by the shapes of 
crystals, and by the cracks and colors and chemicals of the 
ledges. Likewise the tragedies of the ice age were in- 
ferred from glacial scratches, from rounded hills of hard- 
pan, and from the perching bowlders. So the story of the 
aborigines is to be read from a few stones and a few bones 
and a few shells which they left, taken with the written 
descriptions of Indian life as the first white settlers saw it. 
Occasionally a farmer nowadays, in plowing, turns up a 
stone of an odd, unnatural shape, which attracts his eye. 
No other stone among millions is so interesting to him, 
because this one has on it the marks of human tampering. 

69 



70 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Who shaped it so ? and when ? and why ? No civilized 
men make such' things ; so the imagination easily leaps 
back to the uncounted years when savages roamed these 
hills. Some one of them must have shaped the peculiar 
implement, by patiently pecking at it with another stone, 
until it suited his purpose. The red hands which once 
held it are gone forever ; the dark eyes which looked 
sharply upon it to shape it accurately are dead, with all 
the picturesque events of that primeval life. Only the 
stone is left. The handle which once was bound to it 
has been released by the decay of nature, to mingle with 
the invisible gases. Because so much has gone forever, 
the stone is the more precious, and antiquarians grow to 
love stones for their indestructibility. So many of these 
implements have been found, of so great a variety, in 
such scattered places, that the whole town is easily con- 
victed of a long period of Indian settlement. 

Stone axes from Barn Hill, in Beechwood, and from 
Pond Hill, near Lily Pond, and one from the Osgood 
school yard, and from many other places, have been found 
within a few years. 

A neat tomahawk, with a groove around it, just like the 
grooves around the axes, for binding on the haft, was 
plowed up on the border of Straits Pond some thirty 
years ago, and is now in the collection kept in the town 
library. 

An adze, measuring over five inches long, with an edge 
polished smoothly two and a half inches broad, was found 
near Lily Pond about fifty years ago. It has no groove 
for the handle, neither has any other of the several adzes 
thus far collected. They were used with short han- 
dles for digging out the inside of canoes, and could be 
bound very firmly without grooves, as can be seen by ex- 
amining some specimens still hafted, in the Harvard 
Museum of Anthropology. 

A gouge, very thick and clumsy, but polished smooth 



THE ABORIGINES. 7 I 

by some other stone to an edge nearly two inches broad, 
comes from a farm in the south end of Beechwood. 

These edge tools are usually badly nicked, not because 
the Indians were careless, for a stone implement cuts 
slowly enough when sharp, but because these hills have 
been plowed over for two hundred years, and there has 
been every opportunity for the cattle's hoofs, and for the 
plowshare, and for other stones to strike the brittle edges. 

Broken arrowheads, not a few, have been found where 





fjP 


^^p^^c '■' '^^^^^H 


^^^^^^^k£1- ^al^H 


^H^.-. -^^ i^^fcijH 


^^Ef ^^^H 



No. I. No. 2. No. 3. 

Reduced to one third diameter. 

Three Kinds of Stone Sinkers made by the Indians. 

No. I found at Straits Pond. No. 2 found at Lily Pond. No. 3 found in Beech- 
wood, near Doane Street. 

they last led the arrow shaft, which long ago has rotted 
off. 

Stone knife blades, the longest measuring three inches, 
are among our collection, and any one who knows the uses 
to which wild Indians nowadays put their knives may 
guess what blood may have followed some of these stone 
blades. 

Spearheads, one of them found on Government Island, 
are among the hints of Indian fishing art. 



72 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Sinkers, two with a hole through the stone, and one 
with a groove around it the long way, are in the showcase 
among the recent "finds." 

A little fragment of a stone drill is there, and is a fair 
suggestion to account for holes in softer stone. 

Pestles, made almost good enough by nature, and used 
by the Indians for pounding their corn, are among the 
hints of Indian women's work. 




Stone Bobs, made by the Indians for spinning, or weaving, 
or something else. 

There are three specimens of spinning bobs that are 
probable evidence of one of the Indian modes of spinning 
hemp into fish lines and ropes and other cordage. 

One of them, the size of a hen's Qgg, with a little knob 
on the end, was stirred out of its long slumbers in a field 
on Sohier Street, on the side of Deer Hill. 

Another, a very much heavier stone, eight inches long, 
with the same sort of a knob, came from North Main 



THE ABORIGINES. 73 

Street, and would have twisted a cord as large as a clothes- 
line, if that had been its use. The other one of the three 
was dumped upon Border Street, one day, with a lot of 
gravel from Edward E. Tower's gravel pit. 

One of the most interesting of the collection of Indian 
relics is a fragment of soapstone, weighing about a third 
of a pound. It is five eighths of an inch thick, and has 
an even curvature that proves it to have been a part of a 
kettle, such as the Indians used to cut out of the steatite 
ledges of New England, The ear holes of one side happen 
to be in this piece ; in fact, they are what drew the atten- 
tion of the finder, saving the piece from the indifferent 
fortune of common stones. This kettle must have been 
brought from a distance by the Indians, perhaps from the 
steatite ledge of Johnston, R. I., where more than sixty 
little cavities in the rock show the exact spot where 
many such kettles were worked out of that famous 
quarry by the Indians. 

These three or four dozen stone implements, which have 
lately been gathered by the writer for our town's collec- 
tion, are probably but a small percentage of the many 
which the white inhabitants have discovered in their two 
hundred and fifty years of soil scratching ; for fully half 
of these have been found during the last ten years. How- 
many there may be still hiding their story from us can be 
guessed by the amount of haphazard luck used in the dis- 
covery of these. To a keen observer, every artificial 
mark, where a chip of the stone was broken off in shaping 
it, starts a long series of inferences back to the mind of the 
maker, and his human or natural surroundings. 

How far one can look into the life of the aborigines 
depends, therefore, very much upon his mental power of 
tracing causes and effects in the human activity which 
the circumstances of nature here occasioned. 

The date determined by the best glacial authorities for 
the melting of the ice sheet leaves about seven thousand 



74 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

years, during which human life might have been comfort- 
able at this place. There is no respectable doubt nowa- 
days that the aborigines of Cohasset were descended from 
the Indians, who dwelt south of the front edge of the 
glacier when it lay freezing and melting for many years 
upon these northern lands. Indeed, there is very con- 
vincing evidence in the famous Trenton gravels that 
human life prevailed in these northern s,\.2i\.Qs, precedmg the 
formation of the ice sheet. The stone implements which 
have been found in those New Jersey gravel banks, that 
make the terminal moraine of the glacier, have been found 
lying in such positions as proves to almost any doubter 
that the glacier pushed them there from farther north, 
along with the gravel. One may see this great col- 
lection of thousands of implements in the Harvard Mu- 
seum where C. C. Abbott has deposited them ; but the 
evidence of their antiquity may be read in the careful 
discussions of Professor Wright's book, which we have 
already quoted. The further corroborative evidence 
which has come from the moraines of Minnesota, and 
from California, and from the clay image of Idaho dis- 
covered three hundred and twenty feet below the surface, 
beneath basalt rock, all of these, and many more discov- 
eries scientifically authentic, have been forcing the archae- 
* ologists of America to a belief in the preglacial existence 
of man upon this continent. But since no evidence of 
this life has yet been discovered at Cohasset, brought 
here in the glacial drift from farther north, our only con- 
cern is with the life which has come later than the glacier. 
Doubtless the first Indian explorers from the southern 
lands came to Cohasset upon fishing and hunting expedi- 
tions, while the glacier was dying; but when the climate 
became warmer, and the vegetation spread itself for homes 
of wild animals and birds, then such Indians as found life 
more agreeable here came to this rocky shore to live. 
Their habits and customs and language, as well as their 



THE ABORIGINES. 



75 



corn, came from southern seed. Whether in these seven 
thousand years there may have been more than one dis- 
tinct race of people spreading over this region is quite 
beyond the power of archaeologists, at present, to deter- 
mine. C. C. Willoughby, of Harvard Museum, whose 
recent discoveries of extremely ancient burial mounds in 
Maine have given him valuable scientific data, suspects 
the existence of a race more primitive than the Algon- 
quins and preceding them. 

But the Algonquin Indians, who were the one dominat- 
ing family of Indian tribes when white settlements began, 
had spread from Virginia to Labrador, and from the At- 
lantic to the Mississippi River. Their language is the 
basis of dozens of the various dialects in those regions. 
Take, for example, the word " Mississippi," meaning Great 
Water, the first part, Missi, meaning Greats is identical 
in essence with the first root of Massachusetts, meaning 
Great Hills,* and the last part, ippi, meaning Water, is 
seen in the name of our neighboring pond, called Assi- 
nippi. Rocky Water. 

These words at these far distant extremities of the Al- 
gonquin nation are enough to illustrate the spread and 
the variation in the one dominant tongue. How long it 
must have taken for this nation of red men to have spread 
itself and its language over so broad an area is a matter 
of guesswork. The Greek nation had a written language, 
and an enterprise vastly superior to anything seen among 
the Algonquin tribes, and it took them, perhaps, two thou- 
sand years to spread their dialect half as broadly. 

If four or five thousand years are a fair estimate for 
the age of the Algonquin language, our original name of 

* Dr. H. M. Dexter, in Lib. of New England Hist., I, 124, Ed. 1865, 4, says 
that Massachusetts means " a hill in the form of an arrow's head ; " but it means 
more than that. Any sharp hill was an " adchus," but a large one was a " massa " 
"adchus " ; while a place of large hills was indicated by an " at " or " ut " ending. 
" Massa " " adchus " " ut,'' therefore, referred to the region about the Blue Hills, 
where the tribe so named inhabited. 



76 ///STORY OF CO //ASSET. 

Conohasset may be as ancient as Athens or Corinth, and 
these Indian relics as antique as Dr. SchHemann's from 
ancient Troy. 

Winter* settlements were here in the ancient forests, 
probably along the course of Bound Brook. 

Fresh water was brought in buckets of birch bark from 
the stream a few rods off, where a stone axe swung by a 
swarthy arm might have broken the ice in winter for their 
domestic comfort. Settlements along the shore for sum- 
mer resorting must have been many, for at least three 
places have been rich with relics of Indian life. 

One of these summer camps was upon the edge of 
Straits Pond, north of Jerusalem Road, in the very yard 
where Bostonians now resort. An orchard grows now 
where heaps of shells were discarded by the Indians. 
Thomas Hudson in plowing here, thirty years ago, en- 
countered those kitchen heaps, and found several stone 
implements, among which were the grooved tomahawk, 
and the grooved codfish sinker, before mentioned. No 
such shell heaps are here in Cohasset as have been found 
upon the banks of the Damariscotta in Maine, where piles 
of huge oyster shells have reached the height of twenty- 

* The following account of some stone " fireplaces " in Beechwood, upon Barn 
Hill, may possibly have mistaken the beds of ancient charcoal pits for Indian 
wigwams; but even if the Indians here were not in the habit of building stone 
hearths in their lodges, still their abodes in many places of Cohasset are sufticiently 
proved by the implements discovered. 

The field on Barn Hill had been plowed over by several generations, and the 
stones in certain spots were allowed to trip the plow without any attempt to clear 
them out. 

Finally, one day about thirty-five years ago, Ira B. Pratt, then at work with his 
father, started to dig out these troublesome stones. But upon scraping away the 
dirt from some of them, there were bits of charcoal found in the crevices, and they 
were so placed together as to make a pavement five feet in diameter, such as nature 
is not in the habit of making. There were five such nests of stones within an area 
of two hundred feet in width. Fragments of a stone axe and a gouge, also spear- 
heads and arrowheads, were found in the field near these nests. These all may be 
evidences of an ancient Indian settlement; for each wigwam had a fireplace in the 
middle of it, where fish and birds and other game could be roasted, while as many 
as a dozen hungry redskins were gathered about its rude hearthstone. 



THE ABORIGINES. "J J 

five feet ; but many hundreds of savages may have re- 
sorted to those famous oyster beds, while only a modest 
few of our local Indians feasted here upon their clams. 

The Indian women with wooden spades dug out of their 
mud beds the bivalves of Cohasset birth and breeding for 
the hungry braves, that might have grunted their appre- 
ciation, or scolded their disapproval. Domestic scenes of 
the same sort have left their traces in the ground of 
Cooper's Island in Little Harbor, where Thomas Farrar 
has plowed out a dozen or more of stone tools. Some one 
has called attention to the little bulbs of wild garlic 
•which can be found growing on Cooper's Island as a late 
witness of the Indians' kitchen gardens. 

The still water of the harbor was, no doubt, attractive 
to their cranky little dugout canoes, and the soil was good 
for their corn, while near enough to the fish that were 
used to manure it. The third place of abundant relics is 
the sloping ground at the north end of the bridge over the 
entrance to Little Harbor. Several workmen who have 
dug the soil at this place tell of axes and hatchets and 
arrowheads and other sure evidences of Indian camping 
grounds. 

One stone mortar for grinding corn, the only stone mor- 
tar so far reported in Cohasset, was said to have been 
found here. Wooden mortars were much used when white 
settlers first came to New England, but decay has long 
since banished them, so that the few stone ones in exist- 
ence are the more valuable. 

Many more relics from this spot at the entrance of Lit- 
tle Harbor may be discovered some day, when the sod 
fetters are loosened. What tragedies may have darkened 
this lovely slope during the many generations of abo- 
rigines are not denied by the quiet now reigning there; 
for, neither does it tell of a score of dead bodies which 
lay spread there from a terrible wreck, within the memory 
of livins: men. 



yS ///STORY OF COf/ASSET. 

Another place of Indian life must have been near the 
Cove ; for Captain John Smith, the first white visitor, 
found savages there, as we shall see in the next chapter ; 
but the white settlements have so long occupied the place 
that all tradition of Indian remains found there has per- 
ished. 

Just inside the Gulf Stream, on the Bryant place, at 
least one grooved tomahawk was found twenty years ago. 
As late as the summer of 1896 an Indian fireplace was 
found on the border of Little Harbor, at the Manning 
estate, and a pestle was dug up there. What further sea- 
side settlements may be brought to light will only add 
evidence to what is already proved of the Indian life at 
Cohasset. 

The inland nooks, among the pine trees near springs or 
streams of fresh water, furnished a shelter from the furious 
winds of winter; and the hunters were nearer their game 
in the woods, when the fishing on the sea was unsafe or 
uncomfortable. 

One of these inland lodges was in Beechwood, at the 
southwest corner of Beechwood and Doane Street, seventy- 
five feet from either, where formerly an embankment 
sloped towards the sun near Bound Brook. Isaiah Lincoln 
dug up the old fireplace, finding a stone adze and a bit of 
jawbone containing one double tooth. 

Besides the settlement on Barn Hill, of which we have 
taken account, there was another winter resort of which 
an authentic tradition tells the story. It was near a pond- 
like widening of Bound Brook at the Falls upon the Scit- 
uate boundary, a half mile in a straight line from the 
Bound Stone. At this place there is a long hill sloping 
towards the south, and here, where the warm sunshine 
softened the rigors of winter, the Indians are said to have 
resorted even as late as the time of white settlements. 
Near the top of the hill under a rocky ledge a heap of 
clam shells was dug into by Francis Lincoln about 



THE ABORIGINES. 



79 



fifty years ago near his stone wall. His father, Isaac 
Lincoln, reported the same " find " having been made fifty 
years before that. Although some digging there by the 
writer was unrewarded by so much as a clam shell, the tra- 
dition is very reliable. 

Just how closely these discoveries comport with the tes- 
timony of eyewitnesses of our New England Indian dwell- 
ings may be seen by the following account from Daniel 
Gookin in 1674. Gookin was the first Indian commis- 
sioner in America, appointed by the government, and he 
was thorough in his investigations : — 

Their houses, or wigwams, are built with small poles fixed in 
the ground, bent and fastened together with barks of trees oval or 
arbourwise on the top. The best sort of their houses are covered 
very neatly, tight, and warm with barks of trees, slipped from 
their bodies at such seasons when the sap is up ; and made into 
great flakes with pressures of weighty timber, when they are green ; 
and so becoming dry, they will retain a form suitable for the 
use they prepare them for. 

The meaner sort of wigwams are covered with mats, they make 
of a kind of bulrush, which are also indifferent tight and warm, 
but not so good as the former. These houses they make of sev- 
eral sizes, according to their activity and ability, some twenty, 
some forty feet long, and broad. Some I have seen of sixty or a 
hundred feet long, and thirty feet broad. In the smaller sort they 
make a fire in the centre of the house, and have a lower hole on 
the top of the house, to let out the smoke. They keep the door 
into the wigwams always shut, by a mat falling thereon„ as people 
go in and out. This they do to prevent air coming in, which will 
cause much smoke in every windy weather. If the smoke beat 
down at the lower hole, they hang a little mat in the way of a 
skreen on the top of the house, which they can with a cord 
turn to the windward side, which prevents the smoke. In the 
greater houses they make two, three, or four fires, at a distance 
one from another, for the better accommodation of the people be- 
longing to it. I have often lodged in their wigwams ; and have 
found them as warm as the best English houses. In the wigwams, 



3o HIS TORY OF COHA SSE T. 

they make a kind of couch or mattresses, firm and strong, raised 
about a foot high from the earth ; first covered with boards that 
they split out of trees ; and upon the boards they spread mats 
generally, and sometimes bear skins and deer skins.* 

For several reasons as deep as nature the Indians at 
Cohasset probably had the meaner sort of houses that 
Gookin speaks of. The rocks were too plentiful in this 
region to support the best vegetation for animal life or to 
raise the best corn for human life. 

Hunting was probably never so good upon this corner 
of land, because it hes outside of any highway which 
animals like deer and moose and bear may have taken. 

The Indian life was consequently much thinner here 
than it was in southern Massachusetts or about Boston 
Bay. The Conohasset tribe of Indians were unimportant, 
living upon the boundary between the Massachusetts 
tribes and those to the south under Massasoit. 

The approach by sea was dangerous, and by land a side 
track, while not much was to be had here besides the 
scenery and the sea. The domestic habits of the Cono- 
hasset Indians were probably the same as other tribes, and 
Gookin's description is as authentic and as quaint as 
any : — 

Their food is generally boiled maize, or Indian corn, mixed 
with kidney-beans, or sometimes without. Also they frequently 
boil in this pottage fish and flesh of all sorts, either new taken or 
dried, as shads, eels, alewives or a kind of herring, or any other 
sort of fish. But they dry mostly those sorts before mentioned. 
These they cut in pieces, bones and all, and boil them in the 
aforesaid pottage. I have wondered many times that they were 
not in danger of being choaked with fish bones ; but they are so 
dexterous to separate the bones from the fish in the eating 
thereof, that they are in no hazard. Also they boil in this fur- 
menty all sorts of flesh, they take in hunting : as venison, beaver, 
bear's flesh, moose, otter's, rackoons, or any kind that they take 

* See Mass. Hist. Col., Vol. I, p. 148. 



THE ABORIGINES. 8 I 

in hunting ; cutting this flesh in small pieces, and boiling it as 
aforesaid. Also they mix with the said pottage sevefal sorts of 
roots ; as Jerusalem artichokes, and ground nuts, and other roots, 
and pompians, and squashes, and also several sorts of nuts or 
masts, as oak-acrons, chestnuts, walnuts : these husked and dried, 
and powdered, they thicken their pottage therewith. Also some- 
times they beat their maize into meal, and sift it through a basket, 
made for that purpose. With this meal they make bread, baking 
it in the ashes, covering the dough with leaves. Sometimes they 
make of their meal a small sort of cakes, and boil them. They 
make also a certain sort of meal of parched maize. This meal 
they call nokake. It is so sweet, toothsome, and hearty, that an 
Indian will travel many days with no other food but this meal, 
which he eateth as he needs, and after it drinketh water. And for 
this end, when they travel a journey, or go a hunting, they carry 
this nokake in ai)asket, or bag, for their use. 

Their household -stuff is but little and mean. The pots they 
seeth their food in, which were heretofore, and yet are, in use 
among some of them, are made of clay or earth, almost in the 
form of an egg, the top taken off, but now they generally get 
kettles of brass, copper, or iron. . . . Their dishes and spoons, 
and ladles, are made of wood, very smooth and artificial [artis- 
tic], and of a sort of wood not subject to split. These they 
make of several sizes. Their pails to fetch their water in, are 
made of birch barks, artificially [skillfully] doubled up, that it 
hath four corners and a handle in the midst. Some of these will 
hold two or three gallons : and they will make one of them in an 
hour's time. From the tree where the bark grows, they make 
several sorts of baskets, great and small. Some will hold four 
bushels, or more : and so downward, to a pint. In their baskets 
they put their provisions. Some of their baskets are made of 
rushes : some of bents : others, of maize husks : others, of a 
kind of silk grass : others, of a kind of wild hemp : and some, of 
barks of trees : many of them, very neat and artificial, with the 
portraitures of birds, beasts, fishes, and flowers, upon them in 
colours. Also they make mats of several sorts, for covering their 
houses and doors, and to sleep and sit upon. The baskets and 
mats are made always by their women : their dishes, pots, and 
spoons, are the manufacture of the men. They have no other 



82 



HISTORY OF CO II ASSET. 



considerable household stuff except these : only of latter years, 
since the English came among them, some of them get tin cups 
and little 'pails, chests of wood, glass bottles, and such things they 
affect. 

The Indians' clothing in former times was of the same matter 
as Adam's was, viz. skins of beasts, as deer, moose, beaver, otters, 
rackoons, foxes, and other wild creatures. Also, some had man- 
tles of the feathers of 
birds, quilled arti- 
ficially ; and sundry 
of them continue to 
this day their old kind 
of clothing. 

Their weapons 
heretofore were bows 
and arrows, clubs and 
tomahawks, made of 
wood like a pole axe, 
with a sharpened 
stone fastened there- 
in ; and for defence, 
they had targets made 
of barks of trees. 
But of latter years, 
since the English, 
Dutch, and French 
have trafificked with 
them, they generally 
disuse their former 
weapons, and instead 
thereof have guns, 
pistols, swords, rapier blades, fastened unto a staff of the length 
of a half pike, hatchets, and axes. 

For their water passage, travels, and fishing, they make boats, 
or canoes, either of great trees, pine or chestnut, made hollow 
and artificially ; which they do by burning them ; and after with 
tools, scraping, smoothing, shaping, them. Of these they make 
greater or lesser. Some I have seen will carry twenty persons, 
being forty or fifty feet in length, and as broad as the tree will 




Stone Hide Sckaper, ok a Squaw's Knife. 
King Street. 



THE ABORIGINES. 83 

bear. They make another sort of canoes of birchen bark, which 
they close together, sewing them with a kind of bark, and then 
smearing the places with turpentine of the pine tree. These 
kinds of canoes are very neatly and artificially made, being 
strengthened in the inside with some few thin timbers and ribs ; 
yet they are so light, that one man will, and doth, ordinarily carry 
one of them upon his back several miles, that will transport five 
or six people. When in their huntings or wars, they are to pass 
falls of rivers, or necks of land, into other rivers or streams, they 
take up their canoes upon their backs, and others carry their arms 
or provisions ; and so embark again, when their difficulty is past, 
and proceed in their journey or voyage. But these kind of 
canoes are much more ticklish and apt to overset, than the former. 
But the Indians are so used to them, and sit so steady that they 
seldom overturn with them ; and if they should, they can swim 
well and save their lives, though sometimes they may lose their 
peltry, arms, and provisions. 

They used to oil their skins and hair with bear's grease hereto- 
fore ; but now with swine's fat, and then paint their faces with 
"vermilion, or other red, and powder their heads. Also they use 
black and white paints, and make one part of their face of one 
colour; and another, of another, very deformedly. The women 
especially do thus ; and some men also, especially when they are 
marching to their wars ; and hereby, as they think, are more 
terrible to their enemies. The women, in the times of their 
mourning, after the deaths of their husbands or kindred, do paint 
their faces all over black, like a negro ; and so continue in this 
posture many days. But the civilized and christian Indians do 
leave these customs. The men, in their wars, do use turkey or 
eagle's feathers, stuck in their hair, as it is traced up in a roll. 
Others wear deer shuts, made in the fashion of a cock's comb 
died red, crossing their heads like a half moon. 

They are addicted to gaming ; and will, in that vein, play away 
all they have. And also they delight much in their dancings and 
revellings ; at which time he that danceth (for they dance singly 
the men and not the women, the rest singing, which is their chief 
musick) will give away in his frolick, all that ever he hath, grad- 
ually, some to one, and some to another, according to his fancy 
and affection. And then, when he hath stripped himself of all 



84 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

he hath, and is weary, another succeeds and doth the like ; so 
successively, one after another, night after night, resting and 
sleeping in the days ; and so continue sometimes a week together. 
And at such dancings, and feastings, and revellings, which are 
used mostly after the ingathering of their harvests, all their 
neighbors, kindred, and friends, meet together ; and much im- 
piety is committed at such times. They use great vehemency 
in the motion of their bodies, in their dances, and sometimes the 
men dance in greater numbers in their war dances.* 

Thus were the habits of our New England predecessors 
described by Daniel Gookin, the first Indian commissioner, 
over two centuries ago. For how many generations of 
Indians before the advent of white men this description 
may be true, no one can tell. But for many hundreds of 
years probably these habits prevailed because they were 
about as simple as savage life can be, and there is no race 
more unchangeable than the North American Indian. 
What little religious life these men manifested was more 
closely scrutinized by the Pilgrim fathers than by any 
others, and Edward Winslow writes as follows : — 

At first, whereas myself and others wrote that the Indians 
about us are a people without any rehgion, or knowledge of any 
God : therein I erred, though we could then gather no better. For 
as they conceive of many Divine Powers, so of one, whom they 
call Kiehtan, (Ancient One) to be the principal and maker of all the 
rest; and to be made by none. "He" say they "created the 
heavens, earth, sea, and all creatures contained therein." Also 
that he made one man and one woman ; of whom they and 
we, and all mankind came : but how they became so far dispersed, 
that know they not. 

Kiehtan dwelleth above in the heavens ; whither all good men go 
when they die, to see their friends and have their fill of all things.! 

In comprehending the nature of the aboriginal pos- 
sessors of this locality, it must be remembered that they 

*Gookin's narrative in Mass. Hist. Col., Vol. I, p. 148^. 
fGood News from New England, by Edward Winslow. 



THE ABORIGINES. 8s 



J 



were devoid of one trait which seems most conspicuous in 
the Anglo-Saxon, namely, the passion to accumulate. 

They had scarcely more impulse to lay up possessions 
of any sort than a respectable squirrel has. 

Just enough food or clothing to meet the season's re- 
quirements was provided. Fish in the summer time was 
the principal food, and some surplus was hung up inside 
the wigwam, where it was smoked thoroughly for the 
winter needs. 

Wild animals were hunted in the winter, and the native 
corn, or maize, was relied upon to eke out their narrow bill 
of fare. Houses or barns were unnecessary, for they 
wished to lay up nothing. Roads were not made through 
the woods, for they had nothing stored that needed a road 
to be hauled upon. 

The total possessions of an Indian family could be car- 
ried upon their backs in one trip, so innocent were they of 
the passion for owning things. 

How greatly reduced are the functions of life by the lack 
of the desire to accumulate may be readily seen. Indeed, 
we may dare to give a narrative of the annual order of 
events in the Cohasset Indian life that will be fairly ex- 
haustive of it. 

Beginning with the early months of summer, the male 
inhabitants get their canoes launched into the water from 
their winter covering of mats and boughs. There may be 
a dozen or more of them at the Cove and a few of them at 
Straits Pond. If any Indian finds that his craft has been 
stolen by some sneak when he was dwelling in his winter 
wigwam in the woods, or if he needs a new one because 
the season cracks are large, or because his family is grown 
too numerous, he goes into the woods to make him a new 
canoe. A pine tree or an oak or a chestnut of proper size, 
free from knots, is chosen, and with his stone axe it is 
felled and cut to the proper length. After barking it and 
shaping it fore and aft, the long job of hollowing it out is 



86 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

undertaken. For this he uses fire and adzes and axes, 
and most of all patience. With stones a spark of fire is 
struck, and it is kindled into a blaze with pitch pine or 
birch bark ; then the top of the log begins to be eaten into 
by a series of little fires that are diligently kept from burn- 
ing the edges by applying water that the birch bucket has 
brought from a neighboring stream. At night the fire is put 
out, lest it spoil the boat by burning through the side. The 
next day from his camp fire he takes a coal to rekindle the 
industrial flame in the log. Two inches thick of unburnt 
wood must be left, so that when the stone adze trims off 
the blackened surface the sides will be about an inch thick. 
A large adze with a handle two feet long may be used for 
roughing down, but it is finished by a small one, much 
like a chisel, set into a piece of horn or bone for a handle. 
The canoe then is scraped smooth by shells. The breadth 
of beam in these dugouts may be increased by filling the 
finished canoe with water made very hot by dropping in 
stones from a fire until the wood gets well softened, and 
then by pressing in stretchers between the edges. 

Ten or twelve days, and sometimes a month, will be 
used in the making of a small canoe, or 'mishoon, as they 
called these dugouts.* 

After getting their canoes into the water, when it comes 
time to leave the winter quarters in Beechwood or else- 
where, the men choose a place and build some sort of a 
lodge at the shore, for the winter winds have demolished 
the old ones. Then the women begin to lug the household 
goods to their summer residences. 

They tie up a huge bundle of pots, and wooden spoons, 
and stone knives, and bone needles, and fish lines with 
stone sinkers, and fish nets, and their half-finished handi- 
work of mats or baskets ; then they get this burden of 
perhaps a hundred pounds in weight upon their stooping 
backs, hanging it by a band across their foreheads. They 

* See Roger Williams' Key to the Languages of America, p. loo. 



THE ABORIGINES. 



87 



hold their heads by clasping their hands over them, thus 
easing the strain upon their necks. On they go single 
file through the woods by the old trail that leads to the 
beach down Bound Brook or Rattlesnake Run. 

Half-grown girls carry little bundles for their mothers 
wrapped in beaver skins, and if you look in at the top you 
see the most stolid little red-faced baby with black eyes 





Seven eighths natural length. 
Side and Edge View of Stone Spearhead. Stone Knife Blade. 
Barn Hill, Beechwood. From Lily Pond. 

and putty features, that endures silently any amount of 

jogging. 

Toddling behind the women are little boys with moose- 
hide moccasins and leather garments, so cunning that 
their mother laughed heartily at them when first their little 
bodies were thus adorned. The burdens are rested upon 



88 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

a fallen tree here and there next to the trail, and the birds 
or squirrels catch glimpses of the strange procession as it 
moves through the woods to the shore. However tired 
the women are, they must broil the fish for their husbands 
or cook the lobsters the men have speared. 

The lobsters were best captured upon very calm days at 
low tide as Josselyn tells us, " going out in their canows with 
a staff two or three yards long, made small and sharpened 
at one end, and nicked with deep nicks to take hold. 
When they spye the lobster crawling upon the sand in two 
fathom of water, more or less they stick him toward the 
head and bring him up." " I have known thirty lobsters," 
says Josselyn, "taken by an Indian lad in an hour and a 
half." * 

Cohasset lobstering began many years ago ; but perhaps 
this is the biggest catch on record. 

But while the men are fishing for lobsters or cod or 
mackerel or bass, the women are engaged in the laborious 
vocation of farming. 

There are places inland and along the coast where 
the soil is favorable for raising corn. These places have 
been cleared by burning since time immemorial, and every 
year the women with sharp sticks loosen up the soil in 
places two or three feet apart among the roots and stones 
and stumps. 

Into the little holes which they dig a fish or two is 
placed for manure, and a little soil is sprinkled on top; 
then four or five kernels of ripe corn are dropped into the 
hole and covered. The women plant as much as they 
choose each day, leaving their babies at a convenient spot 
near their work, where children are playing or squabbling 
as the moods of nature prompt. They plant in April and 
May, reaping in September, when it is stored in pits in the 
ground. 

* John Josselyn's Account of Two Voyages to New England, 1674. 



THE ABORIGINES. 89 

This corn, or ewachim* as Governor Winslow tells us the 
Indians call it, is a most remarkable cereal. No other 
grain yields as much for the labor expended, and none can 
be so easily garnered as the large ears full of this luscious 
grain. It is food when green as well as when ripe, and the 
leaves of it make useful mats for Indian homes. One of 
the misfortunes to the crop which rouses the wrath of the 
female farmers is the pillaging by wolves at seedtime. 
These hungry beasts, prowling across a cornfield just 
planted, sniff the fish in the ground and dig them out for a 
savory meal ; so that a night watch is sometimes posted for 
about two weeks until the fish have rotted. Through the 
long lazy summer its growth is protected from the crows 
and the wild turkeys. The season draws to its end. 
During the hot days the Indians about the Cove are doz- 
ing in the shade of bushes or bathing in the tide or pad- 
dling out in their canoes to where their fish nets are set, 
or going on a visit to some friend among the Massachu- 
setts to the north, or the Wampanoags to the south. 

At night, after the last meal has been devoured, fish, 
berries, corn cake, clams, lobsters, whatever the women of 
the household have been able to make ready, the evening 
campfires cast a glow upon a group of red faces that shine 
with social enjoyment and with grease. Young braves 
banter each other until peals of laughter burst upon the 
evening air, or they plan some escapade for the morrow, 
or they growl over the misfortunes of the day, until nature 
lays them low in sleep while the silent tide creeps in and 
out. 

In the fall of the year they gather bunches of swamp 
milkweed {Asclepias incarnata), which has a tough fiber 
just inside the bark, from which their hemp is spun into 
threads, fish lines, and ropes. Their skill is praised by Wil- 
liam Wood, writing in 1671, who says : " Their cordage is so 

* Good News from New England, Gov. E. Winslow, in Arber's Story of Pilgrim 
Fathers, p. 594. 



90 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



even, soft, and smooth, that it looks more like silk than 
hemp." 

The spinning is done in their winter homes, to which 
they migrate in the fall, and there too is carried on their 
tanning and curing of skins. Large animals are caught 
by nooses made from their strong hemp ropes. The noose 
is attached to a tree held down by a trigger on the ground 

where the animals 
browse. When the 
hoof steps in, the 
trigger is sprung, 
and up flies the tree- 
top with a tight 
noose about the leg 
of the struggling 
animal.* 

The death blow 
must be dealt by the 
clumsy stone axe 
or the spear with its 
jagged stone head. 
But with these rude 
implements great 
skill is acquired. In 
throwing a toma- 
hawk the Indian aim 
is most unerring. 
" Their boyes," says 
Captain Edward 
Johnson,! will ordi- 
narily shoot fish with their arrows as they swim in shallow 
rivers. They draw the arrow halfway, putting the point of 
it in the water; they let fly and strike the fish through. 

* Moiirt's Relation, p. 8, tells how Gov. William Bradford was caught in one of 
these traps and " horsed up by the leg." 

See also, for similar incidents, Thomas Morton's New English Canaan, p. 200. 
t History of New England, 1628-1652, p. 227. 




Side and Edge of Spear or Knife Blade. 
Government Island. 



THE ABORIGINES. 



91 



Among the other occupations of their wigwams in win- 
ter and summer are the making of wampum, or money, and 
the fashioning of stone implements. The latter has al- 
ready been mentioned, and much skill is necessary in 
chipping one stone by striking it with another. Some of 
them are smoothed by long rubbing. Bits of quartz with- 




Three quarters natural length. 
Upper — A Reject. Stone Knife Blade. 

Lower — Spearhead from Punch Bowl. From Government Island. 

out any smoothing, after being chipped into flat, triangular 
points, are fastened into arrow shafts either by a hard gum 
or by sinews. 

Pieces of felsite are most used for edge tools, because 
they chip with a conchoidal fracture instead of cracking 
straight through. How to bore a hole in stone without 



92 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

the use of steel may be a puzzle, but the Indian solves it 
by whirling a stick with sand and water in the cavity. 

For softer stones, like soapstone for tobacco pipes and 
slate for sinkers, a drill of harder stone is used. 

The only metal used in the arts is copper, and that very 
sparingly in these regions ; but stone implements are sat- 
isfactory, since nothing better is known. 

For the small amount of commerce carried on, a money 
is used which comes from a familiar seashell. It is the 
quahog, or, as Roger Williams spells it, poquahock.* 

It is the same species of clam ( Venus mercenarid) which 
the glacier pushed out of Boston Harbor thousands of 
years before in making our hills.f Williams says: "The 
Indians wade deep and dive for it, and after they have 
eaten the meat, in those which are good, they break out 
about half an inch of a black part of the shell, which they 
make into their black money." A cheaper kind of money 
corresponding to our silver " is the wampum or white 
money, made of a periwinkle shell," says Williams. 

Thus do the commercial and private affairs of the 
Indian life move on from year to year. Petty jealousies 
and noble courage, progressiveness and fogyism, romances 
and drudgeries, all the fundamental experiences of human 
life, are enacted yearly in this remote corner of Indian 
habitations, without any significant changes, until one day 
a paleface is seen — eight or nine of them in a strange, 
broad boat, which enters the harbor with the paddles 
sticking out horizontally on both sides, instead of going 
straight down into the water as any sensible Indian 
would have them. 

• Key to Language of America, p. 102/ fSee p. 39. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE " QUONAHASSIT " PIONEERS. 

THE first white man known to have entered our 
harbor was Captain John Smith, of Pocahontas fame, 
with eight or nine English sailors, in the summer of 1614. 
That was six years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, 
and sixteen years before the Puritans were established at 
Boston. 

■ The coming of that rowboat, with its European crew, 
into the channel of Cohasset Harbor discovered a secret 
hitherto held by nature and by its savage inhabitants. 

Great excitement was aroused by these intruders, as 
though by instinct the savage heart felt the far-reaching 
consequences of that visit. It is true that rumors of pale- 
faced strangers upon their coast had floated for many years 
from tribe to tribe among the Indians ; but to see these 
mysterious strangers was an exciting experience. 

Ever since the year 1498, when John Cabot and his 
son Sebastian explored the east coast of North America, 
adventurous mariners had made occasional landfalls upon 
the coast. 

In the year 1568, forty-six years before John Smith 
appeared at Cohasset, an Englishman named David Ingram, 
with nearly a hundred companions, had been abandoned by 
Captain John Hawkins on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico. 
David Ingram and two others made their way afoot along 
the Indian trails for many tedious months, until they reached 
the New England coast ; and Ingram was finally picked up 
at the mouth of the St. John River (N. B.) by a French 
ship. 

We shall never have the satisfaction of knowing whether 



94 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Ino-ram's weary feet ever honored the soil of Cohasset, but 
the story of him and of others must have been retailed here 
in the Indian gossip. 

After the year 1600 the visits of mariners to the coast 
of Maine were frequently described in the written docu- 
ments of that period, and some of these adventurers no 
doubt came in sight of tlie Cohasset rocks. Perhaps the 
narrowest escape from a visit was when Martin Pring, in 
the summer of 1603, was searching for a cargo of sassafras 
in Massachusetts Bay, first on the north shore and then on 
the south. But his vessel was too precious to be risked 
among the rocks that stud our shore, and he sailed south- 
ward till he came to the smooth harbor of Plymouth.* 
There he loaded two vessels with sassafras ; and, after an 
amusing adventure with the Indians, who were terrified by 
Pring's two huge mastiff dogs, he sailed home to Bristol, 
England. 

Two years after this, in the summer of 1605, again Co- 
hasset narrowly escaped discovery, Samuel de Cham- 
plain says in his "Voyages" : "On the eighteenth of June, 
1605, Sieur de Monts set out from the island of St. Croix, 
with some gentlemen, twenty sailors, and a savage named 
Panounias, together with his wife whom he was unwilling 
to leave behind," as guides to explore the coast of Massa- 
chusetts Bay. They passed the islands of Boston Harbor, 
July 15, which, says Champlain, were covered with trees, 
and they were met by great numbers of canoes with 
Indians. 

On Sunday, the seventeenth of July, this little bark of 
fifteen tons sailed past Point Allerton along in full sight 
of the white granite rocks of Cohasset, outside of our 

* Palfrey and Bancroft, following the lead of Belknap, have taken Pring's visit to 
terminate at Edgartown Harbor in Martha's Vineyard instead of Plymouth Har- 
bor; but Dr. De Costa (N. E. Hist, and Gen. Reg., Jan., 1878) locates it at Plym- 
outh, called by Pring " Whitson Bay." After a careful study of Pring's narrative 
in Purchas' Pilgrims, Vol. IV, p. 1654, I am convinced that Dr. De Costa is 
Tight. 



THE " QUONAHASSIT" PIONEERS. 



95 



murderous ledges, past Scituate and Marshfield, anchoring 
for the night not far from Brant Rock.* 

It is quite obvious that the obscure and rock-fringed 
harbor of Cohasset would not be discovered until some 
explorer in a rowboat might venture in between the 
uncharted rocks. 

This deed was reserved for Captain John Smith, the ver- 
satile and brilliant hero of the Virginia Colony. 

It was in the summer of 
1614 that Smith's two ves- 
sels lay at Monhigan Island, 
off the coast of Maine, tak- 
ing cargoes of fish. "Whilest 
the sailers fished," says 
Smith, " my selfe, with eight 
or nine others of them that 
might best bee spared, rang- 
ing the coast in a small boat, 
wee got for trifles neer 1 100 
Bever skinnes, 100 martins 
and neer as many Otters." 
He drew a very creditable 
map of the coast line, the 
first really good one, from 
Maine to the bottom of 
Cape Cod. 

He visited about forty 
Indian villages, and gave the 
names of about twenty 

different tribes. One of them is spelled Quonahassit, 
and it is perhaps the most interesting word to us in all 
of Captain Smith's "Description of New England." 

It is immediately recognized as the original name from 
which Cohasset has come. It was the Indians' own name 




CJH' "' •'•'Lints ,/,jr/„a. rtr TmcLtA^,. 
rpiitfkiw t^y Grace aij. C}lon: I'-yhtcr- t, 

0/ Salva^!S,niuk Ciyi/Lz'd ly iAic-kS- 
/Scjijkcw ify Sfii-U.and a it Clorr OyfSi^ 
'_ Sf.i/uru art Br^e wiJuut.lut Qolae. Wtrktn, y^ 



Captain John Smith. 
The Discoverer of Cohasset, 



*Champlain's Voyages, Chap. VII, Prince Publication. 
neers of France in the New World, p. 254. 



Cf. Parkman's Pio- 



g6 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

for their own home, spelled as they pronounced it to Smith's 
expert ear. 

The meaning of it is a fair object of inquiry, for the 
Indian names of places are almost invariably descriptive 
words. 

Parson Flint, in his "Century Discourses," said that 
"Conohasset was an Indian name, signifying a fishing 
promontory ; " but this meaning is undoubtedly a mistake.* 
No part of the word means fish, and there is nothing in it 
to signify a promontory. The Indian word for fish is 
naviis or nahmos, 2iV\(\ a "place of fish" is ncviaskct or 
some allied form of the word. By carefully comparing 
ours with several other Indian words that are similar, the 
first part of the word, or Qiiona, is proved to mean "long." 
It is to be seen in the old spelling of Connecticut River, 
namely, Quonnaticut, meaning a lojig tidal river. In 
Pennsylvania the following Indian names for rivers show 
the same root, meaning "long": Conodoguinet =:long 
way nothing but bends. Conequenessing ^ long way 
straight. The same root with a disguised spelling is in 
the familiar Kennebec River of Maine, meaning " long 
river." Kcnne or comie or cono or quona are the differ- 
ent spellings of substantially the same Indian sounds. 

The second root discernible in our name is hassi, which 
undoubtedly means "rock" or "rocky." Six different 
dialects of the Algonquin language have a word similar 
to this, meaning rock or stone : /nissun, assene, osszn, assDi, 
akhsin^ asenneJi. The nearest to ours may be the so- 
called " Old Algonquin " form of asshi. 

The t ending of our name is a familiar sound at the end 
of many, Indian names for localities. The terminal at, et, 
it, ot, nt, etc., was indicative of place or the name of a 
locality. 

* Deane's History of Scituate, written ten years later, continues this error, quoting 
from Flint (p. 4) ; also Solomon I.incoln's History of Hingham, 1627, only six 
years after Parson Flint's Discourses, retails the same blunder (p. 32). Parson 
Flint may have taken some traditional meaning without investigating it. 



THE "QUONAHASSIT" PIONEERS. 97 

Thus Ouona-hassi-t meant a " long-rocky-place," and 
was the natural descriptive which the natives must have 
used from the beginning. How far back into the pre- 
historic centuries the name might be traced depends 
upon the length of habitation assigned to the Algonquin 
race ; but it is not impossible that our name is much older 
than Rome.* 

But John Smith did more than writing our name for 
the first time in the world's literature ; he shed the first 
blood that is laid to the charge of white men in this place. 
For some reason Smith and his men enraged several of 
our Indians at the Cove. Whether by some insult or 
rascality which the sailors were not above doing, no one 
can ever tell ; but Smith remembered the fury of these 
Indians. " For," he says, " upon a quarrell we had with 
one of them, hee only with three others, crossed the 
harbor of Quonahassit to certain rocks whereby wee must 
passe ; and there let flie their arrowes for our shot, till we 
were out of danger." In telling the same incident at 
another place in his book he adds, "yet one of them was 
slaine, and another shot through his thigh." 

It would satisfy some curiosity to know the exact place 
of rocks from which the Indians "let flie their arrowes." 
Hominy Point, f near by the channel which separates it 
from Bassing Beach, seems the most probable place of am- 
bush for this first Indian revenge against the white intrud- 
ers. A clump of granite rocks in the marsh on Hominy 
Point, near by the channel at the end of Bassing Beach, 
has been named Smith's Rock by the Committee on Town 
History, because it is supposed to be the ambush from 
which the Indians shot at Captain John Smith. 

Smith's remarks about the appearance of the rocky 
shore bring his observing mind vividly before us after 

* For authorities on Indian names see S.G.Boyd's Indian Local Names, and 
Archgeologia .Americana, Vol. II, p. 307^. 
t Now the property of Dr. John Bryant. 



98 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



nearly three hundred years. He speaks of the " white 
cliffs of rocks," and mistakes our granite for limestone, 
such as he was familiar with in Devonshire, England. 
One can almost imagine him looking at White Head 
while he makes this blunder. 

He even noticed our black dikes of diabase, which he 
thought to be slate stone, and speaks of the ledges being 
"strangely divided with tinctured veins of divers colours." 

He probably noticed the familiar diabase dike on Little 
White Head,* which is so conspicuous from the water side. 
Smith's prophecy of slate quarries for us could hardly 
come true, seeing that it is not slate after all, but 
only diabase and porphyrite that make the dark veins 
of our rock. His prediction of salt manufacture, however, 
did come true within two centuries, as we shall see in 
another chapter. 

Between the visit of Captain John Smith and that of 
the pioneers who settled here, a frightful pestilence swept 
away the greater part of the Indians along the Massachu- 
setts coast. It was in the year 1617, three years after 
Smith's visit. No one is sure to this day just what the 
disease was, but the natives sickened and died so fast and 
so mysteriously that the terrified remnants left the yellow 
corpses unburied, and fled from their villages throughout 
the whole region from Buzzard's Bay to Maine. 

The old Indians told Gookin that the warriors of the 
Massachusetts tribe numbered about three thousand be- 
fore the plague and only three hundred after it. 

It was a terrible calamity, which, however, our fore- 
fathers counted a Divine providence toward them in deci- 
mating the enemy. 

The proximate cause for the plague might have been 
the filth of overcrowded wigwams, for nature permits the 
expanse of population only upon rigorous observance of 
sanitary laws. 

*See p. 25. 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. 99 

It is probable therefore that the swarms of natives seen 
by Captain Smith were more than could ever be seen 
again upon this coast. 

When the Pilgrims were at Plymouth during the first 
winter, 1620-21, there was no journey taken to the harbor 
of Cohasset ; at least, none has ever been related in Pil- 
grim narratives. When they first visited the Indians of 
Boston Bay, they sailed past our ledges in their shallop 
without turning in on Wednesday afternoon, September 
18, 162 1,* returning three days later. 

In the following year, 1622, the additional and unsavory 
men whom Thomas Weston landed upon the Pilgrims 
cruised along our shore, looking for a place to settle. If 
they came into our harbor at all they thought it un- 
desirable, for they concluded to establish their colony at 
Weymouth, which was then called by the Indians Wes- 
sagusset. 

This abortive and miserable colony made a failure. 
Some t of them turned into savages, and the rest were 
saved from starvation only by the pluck of Phineas Pratt, 
the ancestor of our Cohasset Pratts. 

Near the end of that starving winter, 1622-23, when 
some of them had to eat roots, and one had to be hung 
for stealing corn from the Indians, they were threatened 
with utter destruction by the savages. Then it was that 
Phineas Pratt made his desperate run overland by the old 
trail to Plymouth for help. An Indian chased him, but 
fortunately Pratt lost the trail, and while he slept over- 
night in a deep hollow place his pursuer passed on. 
A tradition has claimed that this Cohasset ancestor slept 
that night in our boundaries ; but a careful reading of 
his own account of his flight discredits it. The valiant 
Captain Miles Standish, with some good soldiers, went 

*Mourt's Relation of Our V^oyage to the Massachusetts; and What Hap- 
pened There. 

t Winslow says that only one became a savage; but judged by their behavior 
several must be called savages. 



lOO 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 








THE '' QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. loi 

by boat to Wessagusset, and rescued the colony after 
having stabbed the two bragging braves, Wituwamat and 
Pecksuot.* 

Many pioneers must have passed silently and alone over 
the Indian trails of Cohasset, and many without leaving 
any written record must have explored in boats our Cove, 
as well as other inlets and rivers of Massachusetts Bay. 
The characteristic rocks of our Cohasset shore are shown 
upon Alexander's map as early as the year 1624.! 

Besides this, at least one good map maker must have 
found our harbor and our hills before any settlements were 
made even in Hingham. 

This unknown explorer wrote the name Conyhassett by 
an inlet upon his map, and marked with the letter " m " the 
rocks at the entrance of the harbor. Hills and woods he 
indicated, and the old Indian trail leading from Dorchester 
to Plymouth he traced in dotted lines several miles south 
of Cohasset. 

Hingham had no name nor settlement, though the few 
houses at Weymouth Fore River were named Wessagus- 

* For full account see Gov. E. Winslow's Good News from New England. 
tSee Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. Ill, p. 306. 

The Winthrop Map on the opposite page may be better understood by the follow- 
ing key : — 

"Thewayeto Plimouth," shown from " Dorchester" village across " Naponsett" 
River near an Indian village, is traced by dotted lines somewhat away from the 
mouths of rivers, until it passes off the margin of the map several miles south of 
Cohasset. 

" Conyhassett " harbor or river is shown, with the characteristic ledges outside. 

Turliey Hill, Town Hill, and others are indicated. 

No Hingham village nor Bare Cove settlement is shown, for the map was made 
at or before 1633. 

" Wessaguscus " (Weymouth) is shown, the only settlement between Dorchester 
and Plymouth. 

The Blue Hills are seen on the extreme left. 

Boston shows a flag flying from Fort Hill. 

" Rocksbury," "Stony River," "Muddy River," " Charls River," " Newtowne " 
(Cambridge), " Watertowne," and some other places are named upon the map, 
though very illegibly. 

The original map reaches far enough north to include the Merrimac River. 



I02 HISTORY OF COHASSET, 

ciis. The pioneer who made this map gave it no date, but 
the year 1633 is probably not far from correct, and the 
chief interest for us is the fact that it is the first known 
map which bears the name of our town.* 

Having found now the first mention of our name by 
Captain John Smith, in 1614, and the first map which 
designates our place, 1633, we may search for the settlers 
who first came to claim our acres and to gather our harvests. 

They were the hardy and sturdy Englishmen who be- 
came so disgusted at the unjust treatment long in vogue 
from the rulers of their mother country, that they were 
willing to venture across a wide ocean to establish new 
homes in a virgin forest. 

The throne of England, after the accession of Eliza- 
beth in the year 1558, was determined to have uniformity 
in religious affairs ; but many subjects, with the same 
resoluteness, were determined to have their religious free- 
dom. The conflict meant death and imprisonment to 
many subjects and a great uneasiness to the throne. 
After about seventy-two years of increasing rebellion on 
one hand and of tyranny by Elizabeth and James I and 
Charles I upon the other, a relief came to the strained 
conditions by the project of colonizing the new continent. 
This safety valve was opened wide about the year 1630. 

The malcontents began to pour out of the troubled 
realm to the shores of New England. In ten years, be- 
tween 1630 and 1640, about twenty thousand persons 
were seized with this colonizing fever and came flocking 
to the western shore. Some hundreds of these voluntary 
exiles were humble dwellers in the county of Norfolk, 
England, in and near the town of Hingham, about 
seventy-five miles north of London, and thirty-five miles 
from the University of Cambridge. 

There was one family named Hobart, with four grown- 

*The map is in the British Museum among the Sloane manuscripts. See Mass. 
Hist. Soc. Proceedings, 1884, p. 211 ; or see Narrative and Critical History of Amer- 
ica, Vol. HI, p. 381. 



THE " QUONAHASSIT " PIONEERS. IO3 

up sons and two daughters and several grandchildren, 
whose determination to seek a land of no tyranny has 
profoundly influenced the affairs of Cohasset. In the 
year* 1633 the head of this family, Edmond Hobart, 
with his wife and their son Joshua and their daughters 
Rebekah and Sarah, came to Charlestown, New England, 
bringing their servant named Henry Gibbs. 

Edmond Hobart, Jr., with his wife, and Thomas 
Hobart, with his wife and three children, came the same 
year ; as also did Nicholas Jacob, with his wife and two 
children and his cousin Thomas Lincoln, a weaver. 

There was much prospecting to be done by these 
pioneers to find land well situated near the water, because 
no roads had been hewn through the primeval forests, and 
they did not wish to scatter far. When the Hobarts and 
Nicholas Jacob arrived, most of the available spots had 
been preempted. Salem and Saugus and Ipswich and 
Charlestown and IVIedford and Watertown and Cambridge 
and Boston and Roxbury and Dorchester and Weymouth 
had begun their careers. No pioneer with an eye for 
agricultural needs would choose the rocky harbor of 
Cohasset. But there was another harbor lying inside of 
the peninsula of Nantasket that was still vacant and 
somewhat inviting. It is true that that cove looked very 
bare when the tide withdrew its water; but the channel 
could be used at any time for a small boat, and the adja- 
cent land was fertile. Consequently this Bare Cove, as 
they called it, had so much favor with the Hobarts and 
their friends that they decided to establish a community 
there. Which of these men were the first who squatted 
upon this land at Bare Cove in order to claim it as a town 
site can never be known. 

According to an order passed by the Massachusetts Bay 
Company in England five years before, in the year 1629, 
any man was allowed fifty acres of land wherever he might 

* Daniel Cushing's manuscript, as quoted by Solomon Lincoln in his Centennial 
Address. 



I04 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

choose it, if he would only cross the Atlantic at his own 
expense. 

Some adventurous men were at Bare Cove, enough of 
them to be taxed as a "plantation," on September 25, 
1634.* They must have been few, perhaps only fourteen, 
for their tax to be paid to the colonial government was 
only twenty dollars {£^, the ieast of all the twelve settle- 
ments, and only one twentieth the size of the largest ones.f 
In the summer of the next year their number was much 
augmented, and their career under the name of Hingham 
was commenced. 

Twenty-eight more persons in the year 1635 came out 
from the vicinity of old Hingham to join their friends 
upon this distant shore. Among them was one who be- 
came the most famous of all our pioneers. It was Rev. 
Peter Hobart. 

A minister was necessary to any colonial town, and the 
Hobarts had one in their own family. This son of Edmond 
Hobart was about thirty-one years of age, with his father's 
great sturdiness, and an education such as a graduate of 
Cambridge, England, might have gained at that time. For 
several years he had preached in the vicinity of his old 
home, but the king's suppression of free speech, and the 
general prejudice against a Puritan minister, made life at 
home unendurable. 

Two years after his father's family had gone, he fol- 
lowed across the sea, and upon June 8, 1635, with his 
wife and four children, he arrived at Charlestown,| where 
he found his relatives. 

Cotton Mather says that several towns addressed Peter 
Hobart to become their minister ; but the little settlement 
at Bare Cove was more to his liking, where the majority, 

*The exact date of the Bare Cove settlement cannot be ascertained. We may 
guess at the date 1633, but September 25, 1634, is the first mention of Bare Cove 
in the Records of Massachusetts. 

f.see the Records of Massachusetts, Vol. I, p. 129. 

jThis is the first entry in Peter Hobart 's Journal. 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. IO5 

including his own family and friends, might be of the town 
of old Hingham, England. Here they could knit together 
the strands from their old home, and could draw to them- 
selves others whom they had left. 

The name of Bare Cove naturally had to give way to the 
name of Hingham. The pioneers of New England, in 
nearly every settlement, took names for their towns with 
which they had been familiar in their native land. 

On the second day of September of the year 1635 the 
Massachusetts court allowed the change of Bare Cove to 
Hingham ; and under this new name, on the eighteenth of 
the same month, the first twenty-nine proprietors of Hing- 
ham drew their house lots. 

They were situated along the valley of Town Brook on 
North Street. 

The old landing at the mouth of this brook, where the 
boat loads of new settlers drew up, was near the foot of 
Ship Street, where ducks nowadays play in the mud, and 
the steam cars hourly go plunging by. 

The wild acres voted away on that eighteenth day of 
September were more than building lots ; they also had to 
vote themselves into ownership of separate "planting" 
lots and "meadow" lands and " Great " lots in different 
parts of their new realm. Not all of their land was thus 
at once divided, because they hoped for newcomers, and 
held open room for their settlement. Thus they left 
undivided all the land which is now Cohasset. 

A.11 cedar and pine swamps were reserved on account 
of the timber. 

Furthermore they voted, that same day, that any man 
who wished to sell his land must offer it first to the town. 
The privilege of owning so many acres of land and of 
slicing it up freely to the several inhabitants must have 
been an exhilarating experience to these men who had 
grown up under the tightly locked tenures of English 
land. 



I06 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

The Massachusetts Colony owned all the land as far 
south as the Plymouth Colony, by virtue of their charter 
from King Charles in the year 1628-29. Accordingly, 
when the colonial government granted to the Hingham 
settlers their town site on the east side of Weymouth Back 
River, those few men came into possession of over twenty 
thousand acres of land. 

They were prudent and frugal enough to keep the larger 
part of it undivided, dealing it out piecemeal as it was 
needed, and always having left over a large acreage for the 
encouragement of newcomers, — a veritable public treas- 
ury from which to draw any needed capital. For about 
two and a half years there was no considerable increase of 
population. If Daniel Cushing, the third town clerk, is 
accurate, there were only forty-two persons who came to 
live in Hingham before the year 1638. 

Their clothing was badly worn, their supply of money 
with which to buy necessary imported articles at Boston 
was about exhausted, and in this plight they labored inces- 
santly to subdue the land. Delicacies and conveniences 
which might easily be had in old Hingham were only to 
be longed for here. 

They learned how to raise Indian corn, and they planted 
other grains and vegetables from foreign seeds. Apple 
trees were set out, currant bushes and gooseberries planted, 
all the familiar schemes of getting food were resorted 
to ; but it takes more time than two or three years to 
conjure up a self-supporting farm on these New England 
hills. 

A corn mill at Weymouth was the nearest place for 
grinding, and the old road leading to it was a necessary 
highway. It may be that this road was frequently blocked 
by trees that men felled across it in clearing their land, for 
on April 11, 1637, it was voted, that if any man should fell 
a tree across a highway and it be not removed within one 
day, so that a man with horse and cart could pass, he 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. IQ/ 

should be fined tvvelvepence. Horses and cattle* and 
sheep and goats and hogs had been brought from England 
to the colonies in hundreds by this time, and Hingham had 
a few. That these creatures were inspired with certain 
offensive ideas of freedom seems plain, because insecure 
fences were very early forbidden. On the same date of 
April 1 1, 1637, another fine of twelvepence was ordered to 
be imposed upon any man for every rod of paling not high 
enough or not securely fastened into the ground. 

The goats and some cattle could browse upon trees, and 
the hogs could root for a living ; but working cattle and 
horses needed a respectable diet, and to obtain sufficient 
hay for them was not easy. The meadow lands where grass 
would grow after a little clearing were valuable, and espe- 
cially so were the salt marshes which needed no clearing. 
All the meadows near by the settlement were divided at the 
very first ; but more hay being needed, Lyford's Liking to- 
wards Cohasset was next divided on June 12, 1637. But the 
men came farther in their boats, and without dividing the 
marshes of Cohasset they all took what they needed from 
the coves along our shore. On these trips, which took 
some of the men several days at least to do the cutting 
and the drying, Cohasset was a temporary camping place. 

The shore was thoroughly explored again and again. 
Landing places were found for their hay boats, and many 
excursions must have been made through the woods and 
upon Indian trails, encountering often the homes of the 
Indians. These pioneers spied out the promised land of 
their children ; for not until the second generation was 
this Cohasset reserve to be divided and settled. 

The earliest individual ownership of Cohasset lands was 
in the fresh meadow called Turkey Meadow, at the foot of 
Turkey Hill, sometimes called the region of Rocky Nook. 

* The Lion's Whelp set to sea on ATarch 17, 1628-29, with twenty cows and 
bulls, and ten inares and horses, for the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The Talbot, 
on the sixteenth day of the next month, shipped 140 head of cattle and 40 goats to 
the colony. 



1 08 HIS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 

These acres, where now the Whitney farm spreads, were 
begun to be divided on March 5, 1637, which was really 
1638, because since the year 1752 we have reckoned from 
January i instead of March 25. These grants, about 
fifteen acres, were to eke out the supply of grass for the 
settlers' live stock. 

In dividing grass lands the committee was instructed 
" to allow three cows to a person for stock," "other stock 
of lesser cattle or goods proportionable as it amounteth to 
a cow," " according to a rule nearest to the rule of the 
Word of God." Such was their indefinite standard of 
division and their lofty ideal of equity. 

Besides this little batch of Cohasset real estate there 
was a bit of marsh land voted to an individual, but not 
located until several years afterward. Thomas Andrews,* 
probably the oldest man in the settlement, was voted into 
possession of " 6 acres of salt marsh at Coneyhassett in 
lieu and recompense of 5 acres of salt marsh in the Home 
Meadow, which he had next to Joseph Andrews his son." 

This son Joseph had been chosen clerk, on the previous 
November i, to record grants, sales, and exchanges of 
lands, and to give certified copies at fourpence each. 
There was need of this first registrar of deeds, for in 
1638, the year following his appointment, the ship 
Diligent of Ipswich, England, brought over to the little 
settlement one hundred and thirty-three more seekers of 
American homes. Before they came the general business 
of the town had been committed to nine picked men 
who should have the authority to receive any persons 
into the municipality, " to give, grant, let and set, all 
for the good of the whole," except that they should not 
fix the rate of taxation. These first selectmen were as 
follows : Edmond Hobart, Sr., Nicholas Jacob, Clement 
Bates, Henry Tuttle, Henry Rust, Thomas Hammond, 
Anthony Eames, Samuel Ward, Thomas Underwood. 

* Peter Hobart's Journal says, August, 1643, " O''^' Thomas Andrews died." 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. 109 

It was a proper stroke of public business to institute 
this body of selectmen, because they had already found it 
hard to get the whole number of the settlers together for 
their business meetings held in their little old log meeting- 
house. On the fourteenth of May preceding this election 
they had voted a fine of one peck of Indian corn to be 
paid by every one who willfully absented himself from 
their meetings. 

The year 1638 was a fair sized boom for the new town. 
Carpenters, weavers, shoemakers, and other workmen 
with kits of tools were strong additions to the industrial 
capital of the settlement. 

One public industry promising a large food supply had 
been already inaugurated. It was a fish weir at the 
stream over towards Cohasset which thereafter was called 
Weir River.* Thomas Loring, Clement Bates, Nicholas 
Jacob, and Joseph Andrews were granted the herring f 
monopoly of that stream, April 19, 1637, on condition that 
they build at once and sell their fish at no more than ten 
shillings and sixpence per thousand. 

The newcomers, with their cattle and hogs and sheep 
and goats, began to hew and to eat their way farther into 
the forest upon every side. 

The clearing fires became too indiscriminate and care- 
less, so that in the following February men were forbidden 
to set any fire to the woods on ungranted lands, upon 
penalty of twenty shillings and payment of damages. 
No man, furthermore, should fell any tree upon the 

* These men were granted the " river called Lyford's Liking to build a weare to 
take fish." Since the river became Weir River, the name Lyford's Liking has 
been applied to the marshy waterway between the mouth of Weir River and 
Straits Pond. The Lyford whose name is thus perpetuated was a preacher from 
Ireland who came to Plymouth in 1624, but was dismissed on account of his 
treachery. He was a settler at Hull (Nantasket) in 1625, before Hingham was 
planted, and the name Liking may refer to his preference of this river mouth for a 
settlement. 

fThe Indians called this fish alwoof, which became readily upon English tongues 
alewife. 



1 lo HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

reserve land for the purpose of split boards, without the 
consent of Constable Edmond Hobart, Sr. 

Loose hogs were a nuisance, and in April, 1639, double 
damaae was assessed for hogs in the cornfields or the 
meadows. The offensive rooters when caught must wear 
thereafter a yoke. 

This hog nuisance was so prevalent in all parts of the 
colony that the General Court ordered each town to pro- 
vide a pound. The first poundkeeper in Hingham was 
John Stoddard ; and from April 22, 1640, no hogs were 
allowed to run loose, upon a fine of twelvepence. 

The rail splitting and grubbing of stumps and breaking 
of ground was going on with much energy, and neces- 
sarily so, because there were about three hundred people 
gathered here by the year 1640. 

The newcomers were not given lands immediately, but 
made private arrangements with the earlier pioneers for 
places to dwell and pastures or planting lots for their 
livelihood. Of course some were dissatisfied with this 
method of getting a pioneer's portion ; but the first comers 
had appropriated to themselves all the choice land where 
their houses were built, and the new ones were not willing 
to carve out a new settlement upon ungranted lands. 

The marshes at Cohasset, however, were desirable for 
hayfields and for pasturing cattle in the fall ; so a move- 
ment was begun to have them divided. 

Accordingly, on July 6, 1640, it was "agreed by joint 
consent that, after the newcomers which come short and 
of others, the old planters' accommodations be made up 
by equal proportions, according to their stocks and neces- 
sities — that the remaining part of Conyhasset shall be 
divided by equal proportions according to the men's heads 
and stocks — 25 pounds in stock to go by equal propor- 
tion to a head." 

This ambiguous ordinance meant a provision for the 
newcomers' live stock and a bit of good meadow in Co- 



THE " QUONAHASSIT" PIONEERS. \ \ \ 

hasset for each man, even though he had no live stock. 
Settlers who had not been fairly treated in former grants 
were to receive enough of Cohasset meadow to make up 
their lack. The "old planters," as they called themselves 
because they had been pioneers for three or four years 
before the others came, intended to divide among them- 
selves what was left after the others were provided. 

A man who had a hundred and twenty-five dollars' 
worth of live stock was to receive just twice as much as 
the man who had none. 

A good cow was worth from thirty to fifty dollars at 
that time, so that three or four cows were equal to the 
rights of one man. To him that had much, much was to 
be given. 

The nine men chosen to prosecute this division were, 
Joseph Peck, Henry Smith, John Parker, Nicholas Baker, 
Thomas Hammond, Clement Bates, Henry Tuttle, Ed- 
mond Pitts, Nicholas Jacob. 

The first man Joseph Peck, and the last man Nicholas 
Jacob, we may be sure, were Cohasset pioneers of some 
prominence ; for their names have been attached to two 
of our meadows from the first.* Peck's Meadow is crossed 
by Jerusalem Road at the foot of the Hollingsworth and 
Richardson hill on the north side of the hill, where a 
brook runs into the salt marsh. Jacob's Meadow is crossed 
by South Main Street near the Roman Catholic Church. 

These nine men did not get immediately about their 
work of dividing the Cohasset marsh land ; for, as late 
as September 12 of that year, 1640, one Thomas Turner, 
who sold his property to one Thomas Thaxter, could not 
describe his Cohasset share except by saying, "half the lot 
at Conehasset if any fall by lot, and half the commons — 
which belong to said lot." 

*Hingham Town Records, January i, 1650, state: "William Woodcock given 
a piece of meadow east of Upland which lies east of Mr. Joseph Peck's meadow, 
etc." 



112 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Indeed, for some reason, several years passed by with- 
out any serious effort to get these marshes divided. 

On June 20, 1644, Henry Tuttle, one of the committee, 
sold to John Fearing " what right he had to the Division 
of Conihassett meadows." 

This was four years after the division had been ordered ; 
but now occurred that militia turmoil, the Hingham rebel- 
lion, which confused and delayed the town's industry for 
two or three years more. 

Before speaking of that disgraceful affair of our fore- 




Photo, Mrs. E. E. Ellms. 

Hayinc, near Eleazer's Lane, looking south towards the head of 
Jacob's Meadow. 

fathers, it may be well to note some of the events that 
were transpiring in the Cohasset woods and meadows. 
Stray cattle found the Indian trails and roamed through 
clear places in the woods, browsing upon young trees or 
munching grass by the brooks and the shore. 

Cleared land with good English grass was not very 
plentiful about the Hingham settlement, and consequently 
only the milch cows and working cattle or horses could be 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. I I T^ 

supplied ; while the young cattle, good only for the future, 
were compelled to shift for themselves, Cohasset was an 
asylum for such unfortunates, and these cattle were the 
first to come regularly as summer resorters from the 
abodes of civilized men. 

In the winter of 1644 the hay in the Hingham barns 
must have been sorely taxed by their increasing live stock, 
for on December 2, before the winter had got well started, 
the town ordered that "all dry cattle shall be kept in a 
herd at Conyhassett or elsewhere to begin the middle of 
April until six weeks after Michaelmas . . . etc." This 
was a long summer, from the middle of April to the mid- 
dle of November, and if any Indian cornfield was then 
in cultivation the young cattle must have been abominated 
by the aborigines. 

Whether for this reason or to keep the cattle from get- 
ing too wild, at any rate a " keeper to keep the young 
cattle at Coneyhassett " was ordered to be hired in the year 
1646. Swine were also ordered to be " kept in a herd at 
Coneyhassett " as early as were the cattle, and these rooters 
were probably not slow in learning the art of clam digging 
at our harbor. 

On February 14, 1650, " It was ordered that any towns- 
man shall have the liberty to put swine to Conahassett 
without yokes or rings, upon the town's land." 

Goats especially must have enjoyed running loose 
in these rocky wilds, and possibly it was in the re- 
gion of Cohasset where some goat owners were in 
the habit of cutting down green oak trees for brows- 
ing. 

July 17, 1640, the town passed an ordinance prohibit- 
ing men from felling oak trees upon the common lands 
" for to feed goats, upon penalty of twelve pence each 
offence." 

But there were more serious damages being done to our 
garment of vegetation than by the goats ; for no small 



1 14 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

business was the logging * that some pioneers had already 
inaugurated. 

On the same seventeenth of July, 1640, it was ordered 
that men should no longer fell the pines and swamp cedars 
and hemlocks of the common lands to transport out of the 
town without paying for them. 

Twelvepence for every thousand feet of boards cut 
from these trees was an export tariff to the town. 

But for exporting oak trees a heavier price was charged. 
Ten shillings for each tree Edmond Hobart and Nicholas 
Jacob were instructed to collect, one half of it to be their 
own fee. These ordinances were for the common lands in 
Cohasset as well as in other parts of Hingham ; but for the 
common lands nearer to the settlement, within three miles 
of the meeting-house, no oaks at all were allowed to be 
cut for transportation after September 4, 1641. 

The rapidly growing settlements about Boston were 
making altogether too rapid a market for our timber, so 
that the virgin forests were being robbed. 

The extent of a year's logging may be inferred from the 
fact that on September 4, 1641, twelve loggers were re- 
ported to the officials as having taken eighty-nine trees 
from the commons, for which a tariff of eightpence a tree 
was charged. From money which came out of this a town 
drum was purchased for the militia. 

And this was probably the drum which passed through 
the bloodless Hingham rebellion. 

This military fracas among our pioneers began in the 
year 1644, when Lieutenant Anthony Eames, provoked by 
some awkwardness of the Hingham militia company, re- 
fused angrily to drill such a set of men. Eames had been 
recently reelected captain of the company, but the author- 
ities at Boston had not yet confirmed the choice by ap- 
pointing him. In order to punish him for his hasty anger, 

* February i, 1638-39, Ralph Smith bargained to give 500 merchantable cedar 
boards, delivered out of the swamp, for three acres of planting ground. 



THE " QUONAHASSIT'' PIONEERS. i i ^ 

the company sent in another name, Bozoan Allen, in 
his place. But the authorities would not concur in this 
attempted punishment, and so sent home the opposite 
parties, commanding them to keep the old officers until 
the next meeting of the court. That meant the retaining 
of Eames as drillmaster. But the majority of the town 
naturally sided with their brothers and fathers in the 
ranks, whom Eames had offended by his angry rebuke. If 
the matter had gone no further than a neighborly squabble 
among the sixty or more families of Hingham, the major- 
ity might have got their revenge upon Eames without 
themselves falling into a worse error than his ; but alas 
for the " might-have-beens " ! Their anger against Eames 
tempted them to defy the command of the colonial court. 
Worse than that, their pastor, Peter Hobart, sided with his 
brothers, the Hobarts, and attempted to excommunicate 
Eames upon an unproved charge of lying about the 
matter; and he furthermore encouraged the men in their 
defiance. When two thirds of the company refused to 
drill with Eames, word was sent to the magistrates in Bos- 
ton, who immediately ordered the arrest of the principal 
offenders, three of the Hobart family and two others. 
These were bound over to appear at the next Court of 
Assistants for defying the military authority as constituted 
by the Massachusetts Bay government. 

Others were arrested for alleged untruths spoken 
against the magistrates. These refused to give bonds for 
their appearance at court. The deputy governor, Win- 
throp, patiently labored with these men, warning them of 
the outcome of their defiance of law, but in vain ; for they 
insisted upon a larger range of individual independence 
and of town independence. 

Two of these the deputy governor saw one day in Bos- 
ton and committed them to jail to await the Court of 
the Assistants. But before this court met the General 
Court convened, and to this highest court about ninety 



I 1 6 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

Hinghamites, led by Rev. Peter Hobart, presented a 
petition. 

They asked to have the deptity governor tried iox binding 
over the Hobarts and others, and for causing the arrest of 
the two men that had refused to give bonds for their 
appearance in court. It seems incredible to us at this day 
that nearly the whole town of Hingham should have so 
underestimated the authority of the government in com- 
pelling its disobedient citizens to appear for trial. With 
a marvelous graciousness the deputy governor took his 
place willingly at the prisoner's bar to be tried — for 
what .-^ — for enforcing the military law! Nowadays the 
man who places a hand upon military commands to resist 
them gets court-martialed quite abruptly ; but there in 
Boston was the chief executive being tried upon the peti- 
tion of that little Hingham settlement which had defied 
military authority. 

One of the angry militiamen of Hingham had said he 
would die at the sword's point if he might not have the 
choice of his own officers. How absurd such a demand is 
may be easily seen ; for the militia of those days was the 
government's standing army, and how can soldiers be 
allowed to elect their own captains without official confirma- 
tion } According to the enactment of the General Court in 
1636, this very John Winthrop, deputy governor, was of 
course made colonel, then equivalent to commander-in-chief. 

That Winthrop's authority should be so questioned, and 
that he was willing to be tried at court for enforcing 
a colonel's proper commands, is a startling commentary 
upon the anxiety for individual liberty which both magis- 
trates and people felt at this time, a century and a quarter 
before the Revolutionary days. 

The principle of municipal independence, to say nothing 
of individual independence, was enormously overworked 
by these our ancestors of Hingham ; and that the other 
towns were not much less at fault is obvious from the fact 



THE " QUONAHASSIT" PIONEERS. I I 7 

that one half of their deputies in the General Court were 
willing to curtail the power of the central government. 

The Puritans plumed themselves upon not being sep- 
aratists like the Pilgrims ; but here they were in large 
numbers at Boston advocating a principle of separatism 
more deadly to a central government than ever the Pilgrims 
of Plymouth had espoused : for military separatism is the 
most damaging of all schisms ! But the deputy governor 
was vindicated. The petitioners of Hingham were refused, 
and their petition, after "divers days " of hot contention in 
the House of Deputies, was declared "false and scan- 
dalous." 

The whole affair having thus been taken up by the 
General Court instead of the Court of Assistants, the 
rebellious petitioners were all fined in various sums accord- 
ing to the degree of contempt which they had shown 
against the magistrates. 

Joshua Hobart, who was one of the two deputies from 
Hingham, was fined for his specially flagrant misdemeanor 
twenty pounds ($100). Rev. Peter Hobart was let off very 
lightly at first ; but when he afterwards refused to pay his 
fine, and encouraged others to defy the government, he 
was again brought to Boston and for this second defiance 
was compelled to pay as much as his brother Joshua's fine. 
The total penance money that was levied upon the town 
of our forefathers was six hundred dollars. 

Eames, for his little offense, could not of course be pun- 
ished by the court, but who can estimate the misery he 
must have suffered beneath the popular hatred of the 
majority of his town } 

Three years of angry contention blighted the industry 
of the town, plunged the church into an unholy turmoil, 
and made family feuds for generations. 

Many peace-loving persons moved out of the town to 
Rehoboth and elsewhere, among whom was Joseph Peck, 
whose name had already been left upon one of our 
meadows. 



I I 8 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

But the lesson in popular self-government which our 
pioneer fathers paid for so dearly, came to the advantage 
of all other towns of the colony ; for all needed to be 
brought by these painful object lessons into a maturer 
conception of true democracy. 

That the error and misery of Hingham could be so used 
in the preparation of our colonies for a permanent Union 
is no small alleviation of the sad affair. And another 
permanent gain out of the conflict was the remarkable 
speech of Winthrop after his vindication. It has become 
a classic in legal and ethical literature for its concise dis- 
tinctions between natural and political liberty ; as long as 
the milestones endure virhich mark the progress of juris- 
prudence in this Republic, so long will this lucid and pro- 
found utterance of Winthrop receive the homage of men 
and bend their eyes to the pioneers of our own town.* 

*The whole controversy is told with marvelous candor and fairness by Win- 
throp himself in his Journal. The proceedings of the trial are recorded in the 
Massachusetts Colony Records (to be found in our Town Hall). 

Solomon Lincoln's History of Hingham quotes fully from Winthrop's Journal; 
and the later History of Hingham prints bodily what Solomon Lincoln wrote. 
(Winthrop's History of New England, Vol. 1 1 , pp. 221-236.) Any one who wishes 
full material for making up his own judgment of the affair may find it in these 
accessible sources. 

Hon. Thomas Russell, in his Centennial Address at Cohasset, speaks of the 
turbulent opposition of Peter Hobart, and commends it; but I am wholly unable 
to praise a principle and a practice which mean disloyalty to State and to nation; 
for it is a gross exaggeration of both individual and municipal rights. 



CHAPTER VII. 

A BONE OF CONTENTION. 

THE waters that press in from the sea through Cohasset 
Harbor to the mouth of Bound Brook make a natural 
boundary between Scituate and our town ; but men have 
refused to abide by this natural division of the land. 

The result is a chapter of discord and contention that 
has troubled every generation from the first peaceful Pil- 
grims to the generation just passed. As soon as the 
Plymouth settlement was made, there went forth explorers, 
both by sea and by land, searching in every nook for miles 
around their little frontier. 

Those who turned the bow of their boat northward 
along the coast found the broad marshes that have since 
borne the name of Marshfield. 

In two or three hours more they could pull their boat into 
another harbor with marshes that we now call Scituate. 

There were only a few more miles to another harbor 
called by the Indians Ouonahassit, and which was fringed 
on the Plymouth side by many scores of acres of salt grass. 
There was food for numberless cattle upon these marshes, 
and consequently they invited settlement to their borders. 
The pioneers of Scituate could harvest a crop here without 
any plowing or planting, and, what was more important, 
there was no clearing of woods necessary nor grubbing of 
stumps. 

The rights of separate individuals in these virgin hay- 
fields were not determined closely at first. 

In the year 1633, on the first day of July, the following 
order was passed by the General Court at Plymouth : — 

"That the whole tract of land between the brook at 



I 20 fllS TOR } ' OF COHASSE T. 

Scituate, on the norwest side,* and Conahasset be left un- 
disposed of till we know the resolucion of Mr. James 
Sherley, Mr. John Beauchamp, Mr. Richard Andrews, and 
Mr. Tymothy Hatherly. . . ." 

This is the first mention of Cohasset Harbor in an official 
document, and it announces an indecision regarding those 
salt marshes which has been perpetuated through many 
documents. 

Meanwhile the settlement at Boston had spread towards 
the south, and there were enterprising pioneers who settled 
at Bare Cove which became Hingham, only four or five 
miles to the north of the undivided marshes of Cohasset. 
It was naturally necessary for these two colonies, with 
their separate charters, the Massachusetts Bay at Boston, 
and the New Plymouth at Plymouth Bay, to have some 
boundary line distinctly drawn between them. Before this 
could be done, however, the inhabitants of Hingham had 
urged their boats into Cohasset Harbor to get the salt hay 
so bountifully spread by nature upon the Plymouth side ! 
The Pilgrim colony had not granted these marshes in 
severalty because they lay at so great a distance from its 
settlements. The Puritan colony at Boston, on the other 
hand, could not grant any marshes that were reasonably 
within the natural bounds of the Plymouth people. 

Individual settlers, however, aggressive and alert for 
their own advantage, more than this, urged by the need of 
hay to feed their cattle, might press into the marshes of 
the peaceful colony on the south. 

In the year 1637, on the seventeenth of May, the affair 
of a mutual boundary was taken up by the vigorous court 
of Massachusetts Bay, by the following order : — 

Mr. Timothy Heatherly, and Mr. Tylden with Mr. William 
Ashpinwall and Joseph Andrews, were appointed to view the 
bounds betweene us and Plimouth, and makeretuine how they find 
them lye to both Courts. 

* At Scituate Harbor, not North Scituate. 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. 12 1 

Now this first member of the tribunal, named " Mr. Timo- 
thy Heatherly," is the Timothy Hatherly of Scituate who 
was so prominent a freeman of Plymouth Colony, and his 
colleague " Mr. Tylden " is probably the Joseph Tylden who 
was a fellow pilgrim with Timothy Hatherly and who had 
been with him before on a survey.* These men had no 
commission from their own colony, and their appointment 
by the Massachusetts court, so irregular, must have been 
obtained by an urgent appeal of these Scituate men against 
the enroachments of the Hingham haymakers. 

Our surmise is strengthened by the following order of 
the Massachusetts court on the twenty-second of May, 
two years after, in 1639: — 

Whereas this Court did take order for a meeting to bee had 
betweene our commissioners and our neighbors of Plimouth, for 
seting out the bounds between us, and that nothing hath bene 
done therein, in regard that their commissioners had not power to 
conclude anything, and for that it appeareth unto this Court, that 
our people of Hingham stand in great neede of hay, it is ordered, 
that they may make use of so much of the ground neere Conihassett 
as lye on this side the ryver whereupon the bridge is, (which lands 
are undoubtedly within the limits of our grant,) untillsome further 
order bee taken for a finall determination of the difference be- 
tweene us, and till the Court shall make other disposition thereof. 

This was a very safe procedure indeed for the colony ; 
but it did not mean much hay for Hingham, because it 
was plainly on the farther side of Cohasset Harbor that 
the bone of contention lay in the broad marshes, so visible 
now and so worthless in these later times. But in those 
days the cattle in the Hingham barns were glad to thrust 
their noses into the bunches of salt hay brought around 
the rocky shore in boats every summer. 

The next public document upon the case was a very 
dignified one bearing the appointment of the two most 

*See Plym. Rec, Vol. I, p. 81. 



I 2 2 HI ST OR Y OF COHASSE T. 

eminent men of Plymouth Colony, the governor, William 
Bradford, and Edzvard Winslow, gentleman : — 

Plymouth June fourth 1639. 
To all Christian people to whome these presents shall come, 

greeting &c. 

Whereas for the avoyding and preventing of all differences and 
controversies that might arise about or concerning the extents and 
limmitts of the patents of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, 
and for the continuance and mayntenance of the anncient love 
and amytie wee, the said inhabit's of the gourment of New Plym- 
outh, have alwayes most zealously desired to hold, observe, and 
keepe with our neighboures, the inhabits of the said Massachusetts 
Bay, know you that we, the Goun'r, Counsell of Assistants, and 
the rest of the whole cominaltie and body of freemen of the 
sd gour'nt of New Plym. being this day in publike Court 
summoned and assembled together, have, with mutual and joynt 
assent and consent made, constituted, deputed, assigned, and 
authorised our right trusty & wel-beloved William Bradford, 
gent., and our Gournor, and Edward Winslow, gent., our joynt 
and prp deputies, agents and commissioners, to solicite, conferr, 
commune, and entreate with thedep'ties, agents, «& com'rs, deputed, 
constituted, authorised, and appoynted by the gouer'nt & inhabit's 
of the said Mattachusetts Bay appoynted for the like purpose on 
their pts & behalf, and finally to finish, determine, & sett forth the 
extents, limmitts, and boundaries of the lands betwixt the two said 
pattents and gourm'nts, so as they may remayne and bee forevr 
hereafter unalterable & invyolable prpetually without any further 
question, contention, controursie, debate or differrence whatsoeur. 

And whatsoeur our said deputies, agents, & com-ers shall doe, 
conclude, determine, & finish, or cause to be donne, concluded, 
determined, & finished, in, about, and concerning the said prmiss's, 
shalbe, and ever taken to bee, as ample, authenticall, & effectuall 
to all the said ends, intents, & purposes as if the same had beene done 
& prformed by the whole body & cominalty of the Gourn'r, 
Counsell of Assistants, & freemen of the gou'nt & corporacion 
of Plym. afores'd in theire owne prsons, and so to remajne abso- 
lutely without any controdiccion or question whatsoever hereafter, 
and to be entred upon record at the next Genrall Court after the 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. I 23 

returne of our said com'rs &c. provided this warrant & commis- 
sion remayne in force the space of six months next after the date 
hereof, & no longer. 

In witness whereof, &c.* 

A few months later, September 9, 1639, ™S" o^ equal 
eminence in Massachusetts Bay Colony were appointed to 
meet the magistrates of Plymouth. 

Remembering the abortive effort of two years previous 
they ordered : — 

Mr. John Endecott and Mr. Israeli Stoughton were desired 
againe to meete with our brethren of Plimoth, and have new 
commission to settle the bounds betweene us and Plimoth and 
have full power given them so to do. 

The time allowed to the Plymouth commissioners was 
only six months from June 4, 1639, ^^id here it was Sep- 
tember 9 before the joint members had been appointed 
from Massachusetts. Accordingly, on the third day of 
March following, there was eked out to them a little further 
authority, as follows : — 

Ordered : " That the Commission directed to Mr. Bradford 
and Mr. Winslow for the setting of the bounds betwixt the Two 
patents of Plymouth and Mattachusetts Bay be renewed for six 
months." t 

About two months after this, before it was hay-cutting 
time, the Massachusetts court passed the following ordi- 
nance : — 

It is ordered, that such land and medosve at Conihasset as 
shall fall within this jurisdiction shalbee confered upon Hingham, 
and that Mr. Duncan, Mr. Glover, William Heathe, and William 
Parke or any three of them, shall have power to dispose thereof 
to the inhabitants there, according to their number of persons and 
estates, for the most benefit of the towne, haveing consideration 
of such quantities of land and medowe as have bene formerly 

*Plym. Rec, Vol. I, p. 127. t Plymouth Col. Rec, Vol. XI, p. 34. 



124 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



aloted to the said inhabitants, so much as have fallen short in 
former distributions may have supply by this.* 

By this order Hingham had to shoulder the responsibility 
of running the lines that should separate the property of 
individuals in Cohasset marshes. 

The four commissioners appointed by the two colonies 
had plenary powers of determining what lands the Hing- 
ham people must not filch from the Scituate people. 

Accordingly these famous men undertook the task of 




Plioto. M. 11. Rcuiii 

Thf. old Wooden Bridge at the Outlet of the Gulf. 
Before tlie last dam was built, looking tow aids tiie mouth of Bound Brook. 



settling for all time this dispute over their respective do- 
mains. 

Whereas there were two Commissions graunted by the two 
Jurisdiccions the one of the Massachusets Gourment graunted 
unto John Endicot gentleman and Israeli Staughton gent. The 
other of New Plymouth Gourment to William Bradford Esq. 
Governor and Edward Winslow gent. And both these for the setting 
out setling and determining of the bounds and limmitts of the 

*Mass. Rec, \'ol. 1, p. 290. 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. 



125 



lands hetweene the said Jurisdiccions whereby not onely this pres- 
ente age but the posterytie to come may live quietly and peaceably 
in that behalf. 

And forasmuch as the said Comissioners on both sides have full 
power so to do as appeareth by the Records of both Jurisdiccions. 

Wee therefore the said comissioners above named doe hereby 
with one consent and agreement conclude determine and by these 
presents declare That all the Marshes at Conahasset that lye of 
the one side of the River next to Hinghame shall belong to the 
Jurisdiccion of the Mattachusets plantacion. 

And all the Marsh yt lyeth on the other side of the River next 
to Scittuate shall belong to the Jurisdiccion of New Plymouth 
excepting Threescore acres of Marsh at the mouth of the River 
on Scittuate side next to the Sea which wee doe hereby agree 
conclude and determine shall belong to the Jurisdiccion of the 
Massachusets. 

And further we do hereliy agree determine and conclude that 
the bounds of the limmitts betweene both the said Jurisdiccions are 
as followeth vizt From the mouth of the brooke that runneth into 
Conahassett Marshes (which we call by the name of Bound 
brooke) with a straight and direct line to the middle of a great 
pond that lyeth on the right hand of the upper payth or common 
way that leadeth betweene Weimouth and Plymouth close to the 
payth as we go along which was formerly named (and still we 
desire may be called) Accord Pond lying about live or six miles 
from Weimouth southerly, and from thence with a straight line to 
the Southernmost pt of Charles River and three miles southerly 
inward into the Countrey according as is exprest in the Patent 
graunted by his Ma-tie to the Company of the Massachusetts 
Plantacion Provided alwayes and nevertheless concluded and de- 
termyned by mutuall agreement betweene the said Comission- 
ers yt if it fall out that the said line from Accord Pond to the 
Southermost part of Charles River and three miles Southerly as is 
before expressed shall straiten or hinder any part of any Planta- 
cion begunn by the Gourment of New Plymouth or hereafter to 
be begun within the space of tenn yeares after the date of these 
Presents That then notwithstanding the said line it shalbe law- 
full for the said Gourment of New Plymouth to assume on the 
Northerly side of the said line where it shall so intrench as afore- 



I 2 6 HIS TOR Y OF COHASSE T. 

said so much land as will make up the quantytie of eight miles 
square to belong to euery such Plantacion begun or to be begun 
as aforesaid which wee agree determine and conclude to apertaine 
and belong to the said Gourment of New Plymouth And 
whereas the said line from the mouth of the said brook wch run- 
neth into Conahassett salt Marshes (called by us bound brooke) 
and the pond called Accord Pond lyeth neere the lands belonging 
to the Towneships of Scittuate and Hinghame Wee doe there- 
fore hereby deternune and conclude that if any divisions already 
made and recorded by either the said Townes do crosse the said 
line, that then it shall stand and bee of force according to the 
former intents and purposes of the said Townes graunting them 
(the Marshes formerly agreed on excepted) And that no Towne 
in either Jurisdiccion shall hereafter exceede, but containe them- 
selves within the said lines before expressed. In witnesse whereof 
we the comissioners of both the Jurisdiccions do by these pres- 
ents Indented set our hands and seales the ninth day of the fourth 
month in the sixteenth yeare of our Souraigne Lord King Charles 
and in the yeare of our Lord 1640 

JO: ENDECOTT. WILLIAM BRADFORD, Goiir. 

ISRAELL STOUGHTON. EDW : WINSLOW.* 

The full text of this docufnent is given, for its impor- 
tance merits a large place in our local history and even in 
our national history. This boundary dispute over Co- 
hasset Harbor has the dignity of an event that was forma- 
tive and epochal in our nation. The appointment of this 
joint commission for the settlement of this intercolonial 
dif^culty was the first step of federation that culminated 
in the Colonial Congress and then blossomed into the 
United States. These two colonies had separate charters, 
and according to strict adherence to the authority of the 
court of St. James, they would be expected to appeal to 
their King Charles across the Atlantic to define their 
boundaries ; but instead of that, they undertook to meet 
each other as two sovereign states, and to determine their 

* Plyin. Rec, Vol. IX, p. i. Acts of the Commissioners of the United Colonies 
of New England, Vol. I. 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. \2J 

own realms in mutual agreement through their authorized 
deputies. The compact in the cabin of the Mayflower is 
sometimes referred to as the germ of our United States, 
but it is more properly the seed of a single State. 

For individuals to bind themselves voluntarily in the 
maintenance of a government is distinct in principle from 
the federation of states. 

Before this Cohasset trouble there was no commission 
of the united colonies ; but afterwards a permanent one 
was speedily formed. The practical necessity of settling 
the dispute over our salt marsh gave the two colonies an 
experience in confederation which convinced them of the 
feasibility of a permanent joint commission. 

A meeting at Cambridge two years before, in 1638, had 
been held, in which representatives of the separate colo- 
nies had theorized somewhat over the practicability of 
confederation, but to no success. Here, however, was an 
actual case of forced consultation and joint action ; and 
the way was straight from this temporary commission to 
a permanent one. 

Before two years had elapsed, the compact was made 
out and signed which federated the four New England 
colonies for mutual protection and action. It is not, 
therefore, unreasonable to find at least one of the roots of 
the Colonial Congress in the " three score acre marsh " at 
Cohasset Harbor. 

In coming to a decision about the details of this boundary 
line, either some or all of the men in the commission must 
have seen personally the places described. They call 
themselves the namers of Bound Brook ; and their reason 
for so naming it was, not because it traces out the bound- 
ary of the colonies, but because a certain rock ledge at 
the mouth of it was one end of a straight boundary line 
to Accord Pond. That rock is now partly covered by a 
recent building ; but it is still there, rising six or eight 
feet above the stream on each side of it, and marked by 



128 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



nature with a band of dark trap about six inches thick. 
It is not too fanciful to imagine that these noted men 
looked with their own gaze upon it, when they decreed 
that so many generations of posterity must fix their 
attention there. 

It would be pleasant also to think that Accord Pond was 
named by these same men as a sign of perpetual agree- 
ment, but they confessed that it already had been so named. 




Photo, M. n. Rc-amy. 

Hominy Point. Bassing Beach and White Head. 
Taken from Government Island. Showing some of the Threescore Acres of marsh. 

But where were the Threescore Acres of marshes .'' It 
is about a mile from the mouth of Bound Brook where the 
Bound Rock is, down to the sea. Yet the marshes are so 
named as to lie "at the mouth of the river on Scittuate 
side next to the Sea." There is only one marsh of such a 
size next to the sea, and that is outside of the reach of 
Bound Brook, and is the marsh which terminates in Bass- 
ing Beach upon its westerly extremity. 

This marsh has about sixty acres of grass, and is almost 
surrounded by inlets, Briggs' on the east and Bailey's 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. I2Q 

Creek upon the west and south — a very convenient loca- 
tion for the boats of the Hingham haymakers. As we 
shall see presently, the four commissioners did not deter- 
mine the bounds of this "three score acre" concession 
from Plymouth. The Hingham settlers asked for "three 
score acres," meaning that particular marsh, and the 
award was just as definite as the request; but it left room 
for trouble. Who should say where the Hingham men 
trenched upon the land up to threescore and one acres ? 
Or who would restrain a Scituate farmer from scrimping it 
to fifty-nine .■" 

Two years later, in 1642, the exact boundary was not yet 
settled, and consequently the Plymouth court, in defining 
the bounds of Scituate, March 7, 1642-43, said that the 
line should run from Accord Pond " by the lyne that is 
the bound betwixt Massachusetts & Plymouth."* 

Eight years more of harvesting salt hay passed by with 
out any official marking out of the Threescore Acres. 

But these were not years of undisputed rights. The 
haymakers from Hingham had an additional reason by 
this time for knowing exactly their own acres. It was the 
division of all the meadows and salt marshes on the 
Hingham side of the harbor on February 28, 1647. This 
division assigned lands of certain dimensions, as we shall 
see in the next chapter, to individuals, so that there could 
no longer be an indiscriminate cutting of the nearest or 
best grass in sight by any one who might come. But this 
division upon the Hingham side must soon be followed by 
a similar division of the Threescore xA.cres that lay upon 
the Scituate side. Probably it was an appeal by them to 
their colonial court at Boston which evoked the following 
order : — 

There being a difference betweene the inhabitants of Hingham 
cSr of Scituate about sixty acors of meddow on the other side of 

*Plym. Rec, Vol. II, p. 54, 



I30 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Conehassett River, the said inhabitants of Hingham complayninge 
of theire grieveance to this Court, & desireinge redresse, the Court 
thinkes meete to referre the consideracion of the matter to the 
commissioners of the colonyes, to whom it properly appertaynes 
to put issue thereunto.* 

While this matter was pending upon the commissioners' 
pleasure, it was not possible for the town of Hingham to 
be idle, as is revealed by the town records during that 
summer : — 

At a legal meeting holden at Hingham in the County of Suf- 
folk on the thirtieth day of September 1651 by joint consent of 
the Town Nicholas Jacob, Joshua Hubbard and Nathanael Baker 
are chosen to get the sixty acres of meadow measured out which 
are upon the other side of the River at Conohasset and every per- 
son that hath meadows there, shall pay for the measuring, as the 
other men did ; and what charge more the aforesaid persons be 
at about the measuring of the said sixty Acres of meadow, or for 
any suit that shall arise about the said meadow the Town doth 
promise to bear it. 

The liability of action at law over this tract of land is 
yet further suggested by the Plymouth records ; for it 
was probably in answer to complaints from Scituate men 
that their legislature, or court so called, in the next year, 
June 29, 1652, passed the following order : — 

Conserning the difference betwixt the jurisdictions of the Mas- 
sachusetts and Plymouth about the lands that hath been in differ- 
ence betwixt the Massachusetts and us att Conahassett, the Court 
have refered the determinacion therof unto the commissioners 
att theire next meeting, according to the articles of confederacion. 

This was twelve years after the first commission com- 
posed of Bradford and Winslow, Endicott and Stough- 
ton, which had decreed the Threescore Acres, unmeas- 
ured, to the Massachusetts side. Whether the matter 

* Mass. Rec, Vol. Ill, p. 236. Cf. Mass. Rec, Vol. IV, Part I, p. 56. 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. I 3 1 

ever came before this later and permanent colonial com- 
mission has not been discovered by a close scrutiny of 
their records. It is presumable, however, that they refused 
to entertain the question of the boundary any more ex- 
plicitly than the first commission had settled it. If this 
refusal was really made, it would account for the following 
act passed by the Plymouth court two years later, which 
was a tardy ratification of the first commission's decision : — 

The Court doth declare that both the propriety and jurisdiction 
of the three score acres of marsh. lying on Scittuate side of Bound 
Brooke, att the rivers mouth, next unto the sea, according to the 
order of the commissioners, doth belonge unto the goverment of 
the Massachusetts. 

The colonial commissioners were busy about Indian 
and Dutch affairs, devising a common defense for all four 
colonies, while this little boundary dispute concerned only 
two of the four colonies, and they might well refuse to 
act upon it. 

Both colonies were therefore left where they had been 
since 1640. The Massachusetts court tried to put a stop 
to this tedious affair by ordering : 

that Capt. Wm. Torrey and Capt. Richard Brackett are ap- 
pointed by this Court to appointe both time and place for the 
meeting with such commissioners as shall be chosen by the 
Gennerall Court of New Plymouth, and joyne with them to lay 
out that marish lying at Connahassett, belonging to this juris- 
dicion, according to the former agreement betweene the commis- 
sioners of this jurisdicion and New Plymouth, as thereby may 
appeare, making theire returne to the next Court.* 

These men were promptly about their duty as the Mas- 
sachusetts records testify : — 

Capt. Wm. Torrey & Capt. Richard Brackett are appointed 
as commissioners from this Court to joyne with two from Plym- 

• Mass. Col. Rec. Vol. IV, Part I. p. 230. 



132 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



outh on the i8th of November next, to meet at Walter Briggs 
house, at an eleven of the clock, to lay out the sixty acres of 
meadow according to the agreement betweene our and Plymouth 
commissioners, and in case they agree not, they fower are to 
choose a fifth and any three of them are to determine it, making 
retourne of what they shall doe to the next Gen'l Court. This to 
be done at the charge of Hingham.* 

Now there is no statement in the Plymouth records of 
the time between 1655 and 1657 that tells of the appoint- 
ment of any Plymouth men to meet these of Massachu- 
setts, but the following report of the committee has the 
name of Josias Winslow, a Plymouth man, upon it : — 

Wee, whose names are hereunder subscribed, being appoynted 
by the Gen'l courts of the Massachusetts & New Plymouth to 
settle a difference between the townes of Hingham & Scituate, 
referring to 60 acors of salt marsh graunted to the Massachusetts 
lying on the east side of the River Conehasset, and in obedience 
to the said order mett accordingly upon the place, and upon a 
survay of the said land could not find any bound markes appear- 
ing, according as it was set out by Hingham men, but understood 
that Hingham men had run the lyne a little higher upon the river 
then Scituate men had done, and thereby had taken 6 or 7 acors 
of land upon the river, which Scituate men had layd out near the 
sea, which we conceive was not so agreeable to the commissioners 
order as the first lyne and doe therefor conclude and agree, as a 
full issue of the case, that the said lyne as it now stands marked 
& bounded by Scituate men, shall stand firme & good, & the 
other lyne, run by Hingham men, be voyd and of none effect. 

Subscribed by 
WM. TORREY & JOSIAS WINSLOW. 

Capt. Brackett being not so cleare in this determination, was 
not willing to subscribe.f 

Following this immediately the record says : — 



* Mass. Col. Rec, Vol. IV, Part I, p. 28.S. 

t Mass. Col. Rec, Vol. Ill, p. 437. Cf. Vol. IV, Part I, p. 294. 



A BONE OF CONTENTION. I 33 

•'The Court doth approv^e of the returne of the Com- 
missioners in reference to the land above mentioned." 

But how could two men fix the boundary when three 
were made necessary by the words of the court order? 
Nevertheless, here stood the names of two substantial 
men, one for Massachusetts and the other for Plymouth, 
and they were practically enough to annul the survey of 
the Threescore Acres made by Messrs Jacob, Hubbard, 
and Baker, appointed by Hingham six years before to 
divide the marsh. 

The house of Walter Briggs, where they met upon 
November 18, 1656, was built four years before, and is 
still standing with its huge oak timbers at North Scituate 
Beach.* 

The streams of human change for two hundred and 
forty years have flowed by that house, leaving it to bear 
witness of the first proprietor of that region, as well as of 
the bone of contention which lay in sight of it towards 
Cohasset Harbor, a mile to the west. Elsewhere along 
the boundary between the two colonies there was trouble 
enough and expense enough in laying out the lines. John 
Jacob of Hingham, and Timothy Hatherly of Scituate, 
led the opposing contestants for real estate, and the 
boundary line has been bent and rebent until the year 
1840, when the present boundaries! were defined by the 
State Legislature. 

The Threescore Acres are no longer ours, but their 
tradition is ours, with the record of those famous colonial 
leaders with whom to be connected is a rare historical 
setting. 

*It is owned 137 our fellow townsman, E. Pomeroy Collier, a descendant of 
Walter Briggs, and is used with its modern addition as a summer residence. 

t Since the above was written several minor changes have been made in the 
boundary between Cohasset and its adjoining towns. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

DIVIDING THE LAND. 

AFTER the militia turmoil of 1644-47 the bitter ani- 
mosities among the pioneers at Hingham increased 
their demand for exact boundaries between their marshes 
at Cohasset. It will be remembered (page no) that 
seven years before this, July 6, 1640, an unsuccessful 
effort was made to get the Cohasset meadows divided. 
Another committee of nine men was therefore appointed 
February 28, 1647-48, to get this thing done. 

Three of the old committee were reappointed, Thomas 
Hammond, Clement Bates, and Nicholas Jacob ; and added 
to these were William Hersey, Anthony Eames, John 
Otis, Joshua Hobart, Matthew Cushing, and Joseph Un- 
derwood. One of the original committee, Henry Smith, 
one of the first two deacons of the Hingham church, lay 
dying that same year in Rehoboth. Another, Nicholas 
Baker, had removed to Hull. 

This new committee of nine were to divide the land 
" according to equity," and the grantees were to pay for 
the expense of measuring it. 

In the mean time, as early as 1645, the dry cattle were 
each year pastured and properly herded without too much 
injury to the hay crops upon the marshes. This distin- 
guished function of being a pasture for Hingham was the 
main fact about Cohasset for a whole generation. If any 
herdsman, in driving cattle to and from Cohasset, allowed 
to join his own cattle any of the young herd kept by the 
town herdsman, he should forfeit two shillings for every 
beast so brought home, and he must drive it back within 
one day, upon penalty of twelvepence a day for every day 
it stayed away from the herd. What trail was followed 



DIVIDING THE LAND. I -. c 

may be guessed. It may have been about the course of 
our present North Main Street ; for that was the shortest 
distance to our Little Harbor meadows from the Turkey 
Meadow, which meadow at that time had been used for 
cattle several years. Who the cowboys were, and the 
swineherds of those pioneer days, the writer has been 
unable to find out from the Hingham records ; but it is 
they who were the first white dwellers upon our domain. 

At the same meeting which ordered the division of 
Cohasset marshes, February 28, 1647-48, a committee of 
four* were chosen "to hire a herdsman to keep the dry 
cattle at Conye Hassett," and here he was living when the 
committee came to measure the land. 

The method of measuring these marsh lands must have 
been more crude than our present exact surveys. The 
irregular boundaries of the marshes, where they butt against 
the uplands, could not be marked out without needless 
expense, and the exact number of acres in some ragged 
pieces had to be guessed at. 

With their measuring chain and wooden stakes these 
unprofessional surveyors marked off first the marshes 
about the margin of Little Harbor. Their first concern 
was to reimburse some of the Hingham settlers, whose 
grants of land in Nantasket had been taken from them by 
the Massachusetts General Court for the simple reason 
that Hingham never had any right to grant her own 
settlers, lands belonging to the Nantasket settlement. 
Accordingly, this First Division was made up of twenty- 
nine lots, containing a total of forty-eight and a half acres. 
In the record of these grants there are certain bound- 
aries indicated at the four cardinal points ; but to under- 
stand the location from our present map would take more 
than a day's hard study. There is no map or sketch of 
the division to be found : probably none was ever made. 

* Anthony Eames, Nicholas Jacob, John Otis, and John Beal. (Hingham Town 
Records.) 



136 HIS TOR V OF COHA SSE T. 

Cooper's Island was indicated as the south boundary of 
Thomas Barnes and David Phippeny ; also the east 
boundary of William Cockerum and Thomas Lincohi * 
(cooper). The beach was indicated as the north boundary 
of Andrews and Hett and others. Joseph Underwood's lot 
was said to be "in the First Division upon the islands'' ; 
and we understand that the series of rocky uplands on 
the north side of Little Harbor, whethei surrounded by 
meadows or by water, constituted those islands. 

But the chief perplexity in locating these marshes f is the 
fact that there is scarcely more than half enough marsh 
land nowadays about Little Harbor to supply the allotments. 

A careful measurement on the map recently made by 
our government Coast Survey shows less than forty acres 
of marsh about Little Harbor; while there are recorded 
in the land grants of this First Division and a part of the 
Second Division over seventy acres. This discrepancy is 
increased by counting seven \ more meadows which were 
named by the Hingham records in describing the grants 

* There were four Thomas Lincolns: (i) the coo|Der; (2) the husbandman; 
(3) the miller; (4) the weaver. 

tThe grantees of the First Division were as tollows : — 
Lots. Names. ^ 

1 Nath. Baker and Andrew Lane 

2 Thomas Hett 

3 Thomas Andrews 

4 Thomas Thaxtf^r 

5 Nathaniel Baker 
6 

7 Joseph Underwood 

8 William Ripley 

9 Francis James 

10 Richard 1 brook 

11 Edward Gilman 

12 John Foulsam 

13 John Leaviit 

14 Matthew Hawke 

15 George Strange 3 

Total, 48I/2 

;J; These seven were the meadows of Thomas Clap, Matthew Gushing, Simon 
Burr, Thomas Hewitt, Michael Peirce, Henry Smith, and James Whiton. 



cres. 


Lots. Names. 


Acres. 




16 


Edward Wilder 


3 


I 


17 


Philip James 


1V2 


6 


18 


Ralph Woodward 


2 


I 


19 


John Morrick 


I 


1% 


20 


William Chapman 


1 




21 


Clement Bates 


I 


I 


22 


William Cockerum 


3 


I 


23 


Thomas Barnes 


2 


iM 


24 


David Phippeny 


2 


4 


25 


William Ludkin 


1 1/2 


1V2 


26 


Thomas Lincoln (cooper) 


1 1/2 


1^2 


27 






2 


28 


James Buck 


^y-i 


I 


29 


John Tower 


1K2 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



137 



of the First Division, evidently granted at some previous 
time. 

There is no relief from our perplexity in saying that the 
pioneers made so serious a mistake in their measurements. 

Something more remarkable than that has happened. 
The marshes themselves have disappeared. In other 
words, the slow subsidence of our coast, referred to in the 
second chapter of this book, has drowned out nearly half 
of our pioneers' marsh lands in Little Harbor. The loss 
sustained by the slow movement of these two hundred and 
fifty years is clearly seen upon the north side of Cooper's 
Island, where four acres of salt meadow were granted to 
Thomas Barnes and David Phippeny, but where nothing 
of it now remains above the salt water. There was a 
successful scheme which checked this loss by subsidence, 
made in the early part of this century, when the salt 
water was kept out by Cuba Dam at the site of the present 
bridge, and the whole harbor was turned into a fresh 
meadow. But the pioneers happened along in the nick of 
time, before the sea had submerged the much-needed 
meadows. 

After the necessary reimbursements had been made for 
the settlers' losses at Nantasket, the Second Division* was 
laid out by the committee of nine. 

Some ten lots of this second group lay along the south 
side of Little Harbor, and the remaining six lots were at 
Sandy Cove. These all lay upon the north side of the 
familiar highlands in that part of our town which the 

*The allotments were as follows : — 

f.ot. Name. .\cres. 

10 Matthew Lane ii^ 

11 Richard Langer 1 1/, 

12 Thomas Lincoln (husbandman) 2 

13 Thomas Gill 2 

14 Henry Gibbs 1 1^ 

15 .Samuel Parker ii^ 

16 John Stoddard, Sr. 1 1^ 

Total 28 14 



Lot. Name. 


Acres. 


I Daniel Gushing 


2I/, 


2 Michael Peirce 


2 


3 Nicholas Lobdin 


1% 


4 Henry Chaiiiherlin 


2I4 


S 




6 John Page 


I 


7 John Prince 


1 1/2 


8 Mark Eanies 


4 


9 Thomas Lincoln 


2 



I 3 8 Ills TORY OF COHA SSE T. 

pioneers then called " Great Neck." A casual examination 
of the land from Little Harbor towards the south, down to 
our present railroad station and thence by the course of 
James Brook to the Cove, shows a very low neck of land 
connecting all the high rocky peninsula east of Main Street 
with the rest of the town. This peninsula was naturally 
called therefore "Great Neck." 

Sixteen lots were laid out in the Second Division in 
order to exhaust all the marshes north of Great Neck 
which were left over from the First Division. That left all 
the szAt meadow on the south side of Great Neck for the 
Third Division. In this last division there were forty-five 
lots that were recorded as lying about the harbor and its 
creeks, and also along the west bank of Gulf River up to 
the mouth of Bound Brook. 

Lots 40, 41, and 43 were fresh meadow, aggregating five 
and one quarter acres, and were lying somewhere apart 
from the fresh meadow which Nicholas Jacob seems to 
have appropriated several years before the division,* 

There is one boundary indicated in the description of 
these meadows lying south of Great Neck which may be 
of interest to a modern Cohasseter. It is the so-called 
Creek Falls. Almost any citizen to-day would be puzzled 
to find any waterfalls bounding a salt meadow, but the 
pioneers undoubtedly found the mouth of James Brook to 
have quite a noticeable falls when the tide was out. At 
the beginning of Border Street this insignificant stream is 
bridged over, and the highway is graded up over the falls, 
hiding them from view ; but they can be heard tumbling 
beneath the house and sidewalk now built across the 
stream when the tide is ebbing. Lot 10 of the Third Di- 
vision, belonging to Thomas Lincoln, was a half acre lying 
north of these falls ; and Nicholas Jacob owned a lot of 
two acres bounded by the "falls" eastward and south- 
ward. That such were the " falls " is more conclusively 

* See p. III. Chapter VI. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



139 



proved by the fact that the pioneers called the outlet of 
Straits Pond a " falls," which is scarcely more of a tumble 
than our James Brook makes when the tide is low. 

Besides these forty-five lots, the Third Division included 
fourteen more lots " over the river," aggregating thirty- 
nine and a half acres of the Threescore Acres that had 
constituted for so many years the "bone of contention." 

These divisions* of marsh land were not all made at 



* As follows : — 
Lot. Name. 

1 James Whiton 

2 Anthony Eames 

3 Jciseph Underwood 

4 Nathaniel Baker 

5 John Fearing 

6 William Buckland 

7 George Marsh 



Acres. Lot. Name. 

14 32 Edward Burton 

3^ 33 Thomas Chubbuck 

'i■y^ 34 (Widow) Hilliard 

4 35 Thomas Hobart 

1 36 John Lazell 

1% 37 Ralph \\'^ood ward 

2 38 Robert Jones 



Acres. 

I 



2% 



8 




39 


John Beal 






2^2 


9 Edmond Hobart 


I 


40 


John Tucker 


(Fresh) 


2% 


10 Thomas Lincoln (weaver) 


% 


41 


Thomas Joslin 


(FreshO 


1^2 


II John Otis.Sr. 


2 


42 










12 Thomas Thaxter 


I 


43 


Francis Smith 


(Fresh) 


I 


13 7 homas Tha.xter 


3 




Matthew Gushing 






2^2 


14 Nicholas Jacobs 


3% 




Bozoan Allen 






^y^ 


Nicholas Jacobs 
15 Abraham Joslin 


2 




Total 






(>9V2 


16 John Palmer 


1^4 




" Over the River." 






17 
18 




I 


George Lane 






I 


19 Clement Bales 


iy2 


2 
3 


" Beales " 






aVa 


20 Simon Burr 


iy4 


4 


Vincent Druce 






3 


21 Stephen Gates 


% 


S Jonas Austin 






3 


22 William. Sprague 


2^2 


6 Thomas Barnes 






I 


23 Peter Hobart 


4 


7 


Thomas Hewitt 






2^ 


24 




7 


John Farrar 






I 


25 Thomas Johnson 


^y^ 


8 


Thomas Hammond 






6 


26 William Ripley 


3 


9 


William Hersey 






4^2 


27 (Widow) Collier 


iy4 


10 


Edward Gould 






I 


28 Edmond Pitts 


1% 


II 


John Leavitt 






3 


29 




12 


Thomas Nichols 






2 


30 John Tower 


1 


13 


Francis James 






5 


31 Matthew Hawke 


I 
48 


14 


Nathaniel Baker 

Acres " over river ' 


• 




4 

36^2 
69% 



Acres in Third Division 106 



Thomas ChaflFe two acres, which was all the marsh on the south side of Straits Pond. 



140 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

once ; indeed three and a half years passed by before the 
marshes "over the river" about Bassing Beach were 
assigned in severalty.* 

In the mean time the changes across the ocean in the 
throne of England had been affecting the destiny of these 
distant colonies. The ascendency of Oliver Cromwell, 
with his Puritan allies in England, loosened the grip of 
tyranny there, and gave more room for the development of 
self-government here. The conscientious and magnanimous 
governor, John Winthrop, " the father of Massachusetts," 
died in 1649, while these marshes were being measured 
out ; but a faithful protector of freemen's titles was left, 
John Endicott, the leading figure in public affairs, who had 
already visited our shore and had established our southern 
boundary. 

People as well as governors were growing more reliable 
in the exercise of colonial authority, and one advantage of 
the Puritan victories in England was that they kept away 
from America, giving the settlers here more time to get 
really settled. 

The same year of Winthrop's death the obnoxious King 
Charles I was beheaded, and for eleven years, until the 
restoration of Charles II in 1660, the pioneer colonies 
enjoyed their independence. But there were many Royal- 
ists in Boston, and the announcement of the king's restora- 
tion was loudly made. 

The journal of the Hingham pastor, Peter Hobart, records 
the notewo chy item, August 5, 1661 : "King Charles 
ye second proclaimed at Boston with grate solemnity." 

But the herds of cattle and swine at Cohasset fed 
quietly year by year, and the sharp scythes swept through 
the grass each fall, making hay to be transported around 
the headlands of Hull to Hingham Harbor. 

♦February 24, 1650, Nicholas Jacob was voted twelvepence and Nathaniel Baker 
two shillings sixpence for a day going to Scituate to see about the boundaries of 
he Threescore Acres. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. I4I 

Fences, made probably of split rails, were built at the 
borders of the upland to keep the cattle off when the hay 
was growing, and to keep the owners' cattle in after the 
crop had been harvested. This "after feed," to which 
cattle might be turned loose, caused some contention. 
When several lots of marsh lay in one piece so that a 
short fence in a certain place would keep it secure against 
stray cattle, the several owners would have to mow at the 
same time, or else the cattle of one owner, let in upon his 
after feed, would spoil the uncut grass of the others. 

Accordingly an ordinance was passed March 13, 1648, 
that "the after feed" must not be opened to cattle until 
the major part of the owners consent. 

Sometimes a fence about a meadow might be very much 
shortened by taking in a piece of upland, either a so-called 
island or a peninsula. Thus on June i, 1655, 

It was ordered and agreed upon by the town that the owners 
of the meadow at Conahassett shall have liberty to take in several 
parcels of upland for the shortening and straightening of their fence, 
provided it doth not exceed four score acres in the whole — which 
said upland shall be laid common five weeks before Michaelmas, 
until the twenty fifth day of December, and so to continue from 
year to year, . . . and Nicholas Jacob and Matthew Gushing 
are appointed to order every man where the fence shall stand. 

One instance of this fencing was when the whole of the 
Beach Islands were so made into a private pasture, while 
the uplands were still public property. It was on May 7, 
1666, when 

It was agreed by the town that Daniel Gushing, John Tower, 
and John Jacobs and others that are owners of meadow about the 
Beach Islands shall have liberty to fence in their meadows from 
Matthew Havvke's meadow to the rocks by the sea — so to fence 
in the Beach Islands for this year, provided that they lay them 
open a month before Michaelmas, according to the town order. 

Thus in the fall and spring all the uplands were kept 



142 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

accessible for pasture lands, and during the rest of the 
year the owners of marsh were accommodated. 

It was natural for property to change hands, and espe- 
cially so when the owners did not earn it, but only received 
it as grants freely made to them. Several of our Cohasset 
grantees within a few years sold or exchanged marshes. 
Among those who strengthened their foothold here by pur- 
chasing from others were John Tower, Nicholas Jacob and 
his son John, Matthew Gushing and his son Daniel. 

Three acres of salt marsh at Bassing Beach sold by 
Thomas Hewitt, tailor, of Hingham, to John Sutton of 
Scituate, brought one pound ten shillings ($7.50) in the 
year 1652. 

When the marshes at the eastern side of our town were 
subdivided for the haymakers, the timber land on the west 
border was being coveted by loggers. 

On January i, 1653, the town ordered a division of 
timber lands bounded by "a straight line from Rocky 
Meadows to Conyhasset Pond (afterwards called Scituate 
Pond, now called Lily Pond), and so south to the [colony] 
line; thence to Prospect Hill from which to the Southeast 
end of Rocky Meadow within side of the river." 

The use to which some townsmen might have proposed 
putting this timber may be inferred from the following 
order passed at the same meeting : — 

"Captain Joshua Hobart and John Foulsham voted the 
liberty of the two rivers, Rocky Meadow and Bound Brook 
... to build . . . sawmill or mills upon. . . ." 

But no evidence appears that these proposed mill owners 
ever fulfilled their privilege. 

The remainder of the town, the hills and valleys which 
lay between the marshes on the east and the strip of tim- 
ber on the west, was not divided until twenty-four years 
after the marshes were first measured. 

In the interval which preceded the division of Cohasset 
uplands it became the fashion for the towns of Massa- 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 1 43 

chusetts Colony to secure bona fide deeds from the 
Indians, for all the lands they had appropriated upon 
grants of the colony and of the king. 

The natives were by this time about crowded off the 
land, but there is no need to be so sentimental on behalf 
of the Indians as to upbraid our forefathers for taking lands 
without giving a fair consideration until so late a day. 

The idea of Indian ownership indeed came ridiculously 
late to the Anglo-Saxon intruders ; but it is doubtful 
"whether it ever came at all to the Indians themselves. 
One might as properly think of owning a part of the mid- 
Atlantic Ocean as to think of an Indian owning part of 
a boundless forest, the only use for which was to scud 
through it occasionally as a vessel travels the sea. Their 
little villages were very seldom permanent lodges ; and to 
buy them out was only to persuade them to move a little 
earlier to a new place of food catching. 

The newcomers did the aborigines the injury of making 
game scarce and neighbors too thick ; and it seems a trifle 
absurd that so much stress has been laid by sentimental 
writers upon the vague ownership of lands which can be 
accorded to the Indians. 

It is somewhat amusing therefore to read the accom- 
panying instrument* made out in the dignified circumlo- 

*INDIAN DEED. JULY 4, 1665. 
(Suffolk County Deeds, Vol. VIII.) 
Whereas divers Englishmen did formerly come (into the Massachusets now 
called by the Englishmen New England) to inhabit in the dayes of Chickatabut 
our father who was the Cheife Sachem of the sayd Massachusets on the South- 
ward side of Charles River, and by the free Consent of our sayd father did set 
downe upon his land and in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred 
thirty and four divers Englishmen did set downe and inhabit upon part of the 
land that was formerly our sayd fathers land, which land the Englishmen call by the 
name of Hingham, which sayd Englishmen they and their heires and assosiats have 
ever since had quiet and peaceable possession of their Towneshippe of Hingham 
by our likeing and Consent which we desire they may still quietly possess and 
injoy and because ther have not yet bin any legall conveyance in writing passed 
from us to them conserning their land which may in future time occasion differ- 
ence between them and us all which to prevent — Know all men by these presents that 
we Wompatuck called by the English J osiah now Cheife Sachem of the Massachusets 



144 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



cution which had developed in England by centuries of 
complex land tenures, and signed by the marks of illiterate 
savages who would more naturally have transferred their 
rights by a few whiffs of tobacco and a grunt of satisfaction. 
The whole cost of the township paid to the Indians 
was less than the value of twelve acres on Turkey Hill ; 
for those twelve acres " on Turkey Hill on the north side 
of a way leading to Scituate" were granted to Lieut Jno. 
Smith and Deacon John Leavitt, August 15 of that year, 
" on condition that they satisfy all the charge about the 
purchase of the town's land of Josiah — Indian sagamore, 
both the principal purchase and all the other charge that 
hath been about it." 

Having satisfied the punctilio of honor with the Indians, 

aforesayd and sonne and heire to the aforesayd Chickatabut : and Squmuck all 
called by the English Daniel some of the aforesayd Chickatabut and Ahahden — 
Indians : for a valueable consideration to us in hand payd by Captaine Joshua 
Hubberd and Ensigne John Thaxter, of Hingham aforesayd wherewith wee doe 
acknowledge ourselves fully satisfyed contented and payd and thereof and of 
every part and percell thereof doe exonerate acquitt and discharge the sayd Joshua 
Hubberd and John Thaxter their heires executors and Administrators and every 
of them forever by these presents : have given granted bargained sold enfeoffed 
and confirmed and by these presents doe give grant bargaine sell Enfeoffe and 
confirme unto the sayd Joshua Hubberd and John Thaxter on the behalfe and to 
the use of the inhabitants of the Tosvne of Hingham aforesayd that is to say all 
such as are the present owners and proprietors of the present house lotts as they 
have bin from time to time granted and layd out by the Towne : Ail that Tract of 
land which is the Towneshippe of Hingham aforesayd as it is now bounded with 
the sea northward and with the River called by the Englishmen weymoth River 
westward which River flow from the sea : and the line that devide betweene the 
sayd Hingham and Weymoth as it is now layd out and marked untill it come to 
the line that devide betwene the colony of the Massachusets and the colony of 
New Plimoth and from thence to the midle of accord pond and from the niidle 
of accord pond to bound Brooke to the flowing of the salt water and so along by 
the same River that devide betwene Scittiate and the said Hingham until it come 
to the sea northward : And also threescore acres of salt marsh on the other side 
of the River that is to say on Scittiate side according as it was agreed upon by the 
commissioners of the Massachusets colony and the commissioners of Plimoth 
colony Together with all the Harbours Rivers Creekes Coves Islands fresh water 
brookes and ponds and all marshes unto the sayd Towneshippe of Hingham 
belonging or any wayes app'taineing with all and singular thapp'tenences unto the 
p'misses or any part of them belonging or any wayes app'taineing: And all our 
right title and interest of and into the sayd p'misses with their app'tenences and 
every part and p'cell thereof to have and to hold All the aforesayd Tract of land 



DIVIDLVG THE LAND. j .^ 

a Clear and perfect title was thenceforth manifest. But 
what about the division of Cohasset uplands ? 

On April 2^, i66s, "The major part of the town hath 
concluded and agreed that the land of Cony Hassett shall 
not be divided - but shall still remain common for the use 
of the town -and have chosen Captain Hobart, Ensi^^n 
Thaxter, Daniel Gushing, John Jacob, and Matthew Cush- 
ing to consider of some way for the settling of the town's 
common perpetually, for the use of the town, and to return 
their propositions unto the town in writing." 

Good pasture and good woodland for alftime to be used 
by the inhabitants of Plingham was the threatened fate of 
Cohasset. _ But the generation of sons and daughters born 
to these pioneers in the land of their adoption were now 
at a voting and a marrying age. New homes were neces- 

i„»,oK-. . r , ^ -I ^ Joshua hubberd and John Thaxter inH ih^ 

inhabitants of the Townp nf iiinrrKo.^ i , J""" ' "axier and the 

p mtsses w,th their app'tenances at the time of the barga ne at^d sale h ''f '^ 
that the sayd bargained p'.nisses are free and cieare and "reelv and 1 T ' 

mmiimm 

iiliPiiiii 



146 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

sary, and the idea of keeping so many hundreds of acres 
in common could not long satisfy the young households 
that were being started. 

Three years after they had voted not to divide Cohasset 
they partly reversed the order. 

The timber and cord wood in the region of the west side 
of Town Hill was to be divided among the inhabitants, 
though the land upon which it grew was to remain com- 
mon. But the rest of Cohasset was ordered to be divided 
on March 19, 1668, according to some fair method. But 
there was the rub ! What was an equitable division .-• At 
first they thought that each man should have such a pro- 
portion of the common acres as he had already of the 
divided acres. But some good citizens would fare badly 

promise and grant the p'misses above demised with all the libertys previledges and 
app'tenences thereto or in any wise belonging or appertaineing unto the sayd 
Joshua Hubberd John Thaxter and the rest of the sayd inhabitants of Hingham 
who are the present owners and proprietors of the present house lotts their heires 
and assignes to warrant acquitt and defend forever against all and all maner of 
right title and Interrest claime or demand of all and every person or persons 
whatsoever. And that it shall and maybe lawful! to and for the sayd Joshua 
Hubberd and John Thaxter their heires and assignes to record and enroll or cause 
to be recorded and enrolled the title and tenour of these psents accoiding to the 
usuall order and maner of recording and enrolling deeds and evedences in such 
case made and p'vided in witness whereof we the aforesayd Wompatuck called by 
the English Josiah sachem : and Squmuck called by the English Daniell and 
Ahahdun Indians : have heere unto set our hands and seales the fourth day of July 
in the yeare of our Lord God one thousand six hundred sixty and five and in the 
seaventeenth yeare of the raigne of our soveraigne Lord Charles the second by the 
grace of God of Great Brittanie France and Ireland King defender of the faith &c 
1665 



Signed sealled and delivered 

In ihe presence of us : 

JOB NOESHTEANS Indian ^ ^ 

the marke of W WILLIAM 

MANANANIANUT Indian 

the marke of 8 ROBERT 

MAMUNTAHGIN Indian 

JOHN HUES 

"mattias Q BRIGGS 

the marke of r JOB JUDKINS J 



the marke of J O WOMPATUCK 

(l. s.) called by the English Josiah 

cheif sachem 
' the marke J of SQUMUCK (L. S.) 

called by the English Daniell sonne 

of Chickatabut 
[the marke of IIII Ahahden ( i.. S.) 



Josiah Wompatuck Squmuck Ahahden Indians apeared p'sonally the 19th of 
may 1668 and acknowledged this instrum't of writing to be theyr act and deed 
freely and voluntary without compulsion, acknowledged before 

JNO. LEVERETT, Ast. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 1 47 

in such a bargain, because they came too late for the 
former grants. 

Next they voted to share the commons according to a 
man's property plus the number of members of his family. 
This arrangement would be very agreeable to large families 
as well as to heavy property owners. Each member of a 
family might be counted as equivalent to three or four 
acres of land. 

But Daniel Gushing vigorously objected to a division by 
"heads and estates." 

A committee, therefore, consisting of Joshua Hobart, 
Daniel Gushing, Jeremy Beal, Lieutenant Smith, Hum- 
phrey Johnson, and Moses Gollier, were chosen to ask 
counsel of six prominent men of other towns to get the 
best advice for the division of the commons. 

Two months later, May 17, 1669, it was voted to value 
all house lots at five pounds (1^25.00) per acre and persons 
at fifteen pounds ($75.00) per head. 

In December they passed still further definitions of 
value for property.* 

The number voting at these important meetings may be 
inferred from the statement that "twenty-four hands were 
held up, to count houses at the valuation of the county 
rate," and " sixteen hands went up, to count houses at 
their full value." 

But they adjourned for a week, when they were to make 
another effort at a division. 

Some English-born settlers complained that certain 
house lots had more than one vote because more than one 



* Cattle 


as 


follows: — 












Ox 




5 pounds 




Kid 






4 shillings 


Cow 




3 " 




Swine 






20 


Two-year-old 




40 shillings 


Shote 






10 


Yearling 






20 


Horse 




5 pounils 




Calf 






10 " 


Mare 




5 




Sheep 






10 " 


Two-year 


-old 


2 


10 


Lamb 






5 


Yearling 






30 


Goat 






8 


Foal 






20 



148 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

man lived upon them. It seems ridiculous to us nowadays 
to think that votes in Cohasset should be based upon 
house lots instead of upon persons, but the English method 
of land representation, instead of person representation, 
was evidently in vogue. 

December 27, 1669, they passed the rule *' that no one 
house lot shall have above one man in voting about divi- 
sion," 

Another town meeting on January 10 ordered a list of 
house lots and a committee to adjust grievances. The 
hard-working citizens who had not acquired land were 
being crowded to the wall ; but the majority had mercy 
enough to vote that " if any poor man is oppressed by this 
way of dividing, there may be some consideration of such 
persons." 

Then followed a week of sharp and hot arguing over the 
division of Cohasset. Around their firesides, at the little 
old meeting-house,* in the barns where cattle were 
munching Cohasset hay, anywhere men could get together 
on those winter days, the absorbing theme was discussed. 
A conclusion was reached on January 17, 1669 (new style 
1670), at a special town meeting. All previous measures 
were voted null and void ; they determined to throw the 
whole of their undivided lands into seven hundred shares, 
and then to distribute those shares by an open vote, and 
afterwards to survey the land, giving pieces to each share- 
holder according to his number of shares. 

By this plan every one would be provided for, as they 
need not feel bound by any one rule of division. Loose 
as it was, the various amounts coming to each by this plan 
were quite definitely determined in the minds of the voters. 

The town clerk, Daniel Cushing, received the largest 
number of shares, thirty-five, probably in compensation 
for his clerical services. Apart from him, the pastor was 
the most liberally remembered, twenty-five shares. Then 

*The present meeting-house was not built until twelve years later, 1681. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



149 



came their two deputies of the General Court, Captain 
Joshua Hobart with eighteen shares, and Ensign John 
Thaxter with sixteen and a half shares. 

The least of all was the one solitary share of Clement 
Bates * (Junior). 

They did not vote away all their shares on that day, 
only 688>4, leaving eleven and one half shares to be given 
to any that may have been overlooked or underestimated.! 

* According to the Hingham Genealogy there was no Clement (Junior) of the 
Hingham Bates at that time. He might have been a nephew of Clement, Senior 
from Weymouth, living in Hingham, or possibly the Genealogy may be in error. 

t Shares granted January 17, 1669 : — 



Peter Hobart 

Capt. Joshua Hobart 

Lieut. John Smith 

Ens. John Thaxter 

John Leavitt 

Nathaniel Baker 

James Hersey 

Thomas Nichols, Sr. 

Joseph Jones 

Thomas Hobart 

Ephraim Hewitt 

John Beales, Sr. 

Margaret Burl on 

Henry Chamberlin 

John Manfield 

Simon Peck 

Cornelius Canterberry 

Simon Burr 

Clement Bales, Jr. 

Thomas Barnes 

William Sprague 

Francis James 

Daniel Lincoln 

Thomas Lincoln (husbandman) 

Joshua Lincoln 

John Lazell 

Anthony Sprague 

Benjamin Lincoln 

Thomas Gill, Sr. 

Joseph Bates 

Clement Bates, Sr. 

Benjamin Bates 

Henry Gibbs 

Samuel Stowell 



25 
18 

15 

IS 
7 
9 
5 



Onesipherus Marsh 

Henry Ward 

John Beal, Jr. 

Samuel Bates 

Edmond Hobart 

John Ripley 

John Tucker 

Thomas Chubbuck 

Nathaniel Chubbuck 

Josiah Loring 

John Farrar, Jr. 

Andrew Lane, Sr. 

Thomas Lincoln (carpenter) 

Thomas Lincoln (cooper) 

George Lane 

Samuel Lincoln 

John Farrar 

John Tower, Sr. 

Edmond Pitts 

Thomas Andrews 
Joseph Church 

Daniel Cushing, Sr. 

Daniel Stoddard 
Samuel Stoddard 
John Stoddard 
Israel Fearing 
John Fearing 
Thomas Joy, Sr. 
Ann Tucker 
William Woodcock 
Jeremiah Beal 
Josiah Lane 
Thomas Marsh 
Nicholas Baker 



4 
4 

4 

2 
10 

13 

10 
8 
4 
7 

2 

6 

10 

5 
10 

5 
5 
8 

10 

5 

35 

2 
2 
2 

4y2 

4 
5 
4 
13 
3 



I50 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Now that their several proportions were determined, the 
next need was a surveyor, who should make a plot of the 
land so that the good and the bad patches might be evenly 
shared, and also to lay out proper highways for gaining 
access to the separate lots. 

The surveyor chosen was Lieut. Joshua Fisher, of Ded- 
ham, and it was voted to send for him immediately. It 
was well known by all the settlers that the best land of 
Cohasset was that along the harbor up to the mouth of 
Bound Brook, the region which has since become the main 
village. Everybody desired a slice of that preferred ground. 
Therefore a block of land a mile thick and two miles long, 
reaching from the colony line northwestward to Little 
Harbor, was the first to be shared. There were nearly 
fourteen hundred acres in the block, so that each of the 
seven hundred shares would be nearly two acres.* 



William Hersey 


15 


Robert Jones 


5 


John Skeath 


4 


Joseph Jacobs 


4 


Widow Hilliard 


2 


Abraham Bixby 


S 


Josiah Hobart 


5 


John Mason 


2 


Stephen Lincoln 


5 


Joseph Church 


8 


Thomas Lincoln (weaver) 


7 


John Langley 


2 


Nathaniel Beal 


8 


John Hughes 


2 


Joseph Joy 


4 


Perth McFarlin 


2 


John Prince 


6 


Added December 6, 1670. 




Matthew Hawke 


6 






Edward Wilder 


6 


George Bacon's heirs 


S 


Michael Pearse 


12 


Humphrey Johnson 


I 


John Otis 


10 


John Jacobs 


2 


Matthew Gushing 


12 


John Stoddard 


I 


Joshua Beal 


• 4 


Edward Wilder 


2 


Caleb Beal 


3 


Daniel Stoddard 


I 


Humphrey Johnson 


5 


Samuel Stoddard 


I 


Francis Whiton 


S 


John Prince 


2 


Robert Dunbar 


4 


Simon Burr 


iy2 


John Jacobs 


8 


Clement Bates, Jr. 


2 


James Bates 


5 


Cornelius Canterberry 


1/2 


Samuel Thaxter 


5 


Onesiphorus Marsh 


I 


Joseph Andrews 


2 


William Hersev 


2 


Moses Collier 


8 








Thomas Hewitt 


2 


Total granted 


7111/2 



*The exact total was 1,394 acres and 31 rods, making 314 rods for one share, 
providing 7 lof shares ; but 71I2 shares were really granted, so there was a very 
slight scrimping of some shares to make up the extra i-jV shares. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



151 



The surveyor measured the whole block and was then 
ready to lay out each man's acres in a long, narrow strip 
lying parallel with the colony line. 

But who should have lot number one or number two and 
so on ? They voted, December 6, 1670, to have one man 
to draw lots for them all. The first lot fell to Nathaniel 
Baker, who held fifteen shares ; therefore strip number 
one was measured off to him wide enough to contain 
twenty-nine acres one rood and thirty rods. The width 
of this piece was two hundred feet, stretching for one mile 
along the Scituate line from Bound Rock up into the 
Beechwoods, Each long, narrow strip was laid out in 
succession according to the man's number of shares. 

Men who owned but two shares had a strip only twenty- 
five feet wide, for all the strips had to be a mile in length. 
Some of the small shareholders, however, took the privi- 
lege of combining their shares so as to draw one wider lot 
for both, or for several as the case might be. 

The surveyor measured off the distance to each man's 
corner and placed there a heap of stones or some other 
mark which was the permanent boundary, whether the 
acres were more or were less than the surveyor estimated. 

The back ends of these eighty-three lots butted against 
a line drawn perpendicular to the colony line, and running 
through Lily Pond coincided for part of the way with our 
present King Street. 

The front ends butted upon a very crooked line, which 
traced along the boundary at the edge of the marsh land, 
leaving room for a broad highway between the lots and 
the marsh fences. 

This space was in some places more than three hundred 
feet wide, and the owners of the lots w^ere to be the owners 
of whatever timber grew upon the land in front of them, 
provided the space was not more than three hundred and 
thirty feet wide. An old cart track used in hauling marsh 
hay led along outside of the meadow fences towards Scit- 



152 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

uate, where a footbridge crossed Bound Brook as early as 
1640, thirty years previous to this survey. From this front 
highway there were side ways laid out by the surveyor, 
leading up into the woods. 

One was between lots seventeen and eighteen three rods 
wide, about one half mile from Bound Rock ; but it was 
afterwards declared impassable. 

Another side way three rods wide was to run from Jacob's 
Meadow to Scituate Pond ; and it succeeded, for it is there 
now, called Pond Street. 

A third of the same width was laid out, half a mile 
farther north, and is now called Sohier Street. 

One more such highway was drawn on the surveyor's 
plan at the side of the last lot from the steep rocks called 
" Pye Corner,"* at the north side of the Ridges, to King 
Street at a point opposite the present almshouse ; but it 
never was traveled. 

At the place where the Cohasset railroad station now 
is, a broad, swampy meadow sixty rods long and twenty 
rods broad was cut out of the front end of six lots, because 
fresh mowing meadows had been granted there twenty- 
four years before. 

Having given all the shareholders a narrow slice of the 
preferred land, the Second Division was then parceled out 
among them by a new drawing of lots. 

The first lot of the Second Division was Supper Island,! 
lying partly surrounded by marsh, east of what is now 
Joseph S. Bigelow's residence, beside the Gulf. 

The next island in the division was called Gulf Island, 
the peak of which is Kent's Rock and its north boundary 
our Cove, surrounded on the west and south, not by water, 
but by meadow land where Summer Street now runs. 
Another large rocky upland called Great Neck, on the south 

* Perhaps so named for the kind of lunch that the surveyor ate there. 
fThe domestic event suggested by this name might have happened to the sur- 
veyor at this place, or possibly to the cowboys that herded cattle here. 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



153 



side of which our central schoolhouse now stands, and 
which reaches to Little Harbor, was sliced into nine lots. 

The Beach Islands, including those not on the surveyor's 
plan, made parts of six lots, and counted as the largest 
island that which lies east of Cat Dam, where several 
summer residences are now being built along Nichols 
Avenue. 

Then the main land commencing where Jerusalem Road 
skirts the shore was measured into narrow strips. 

These strips left room for a highway next to the water, 
and most of them butted one end upon Rattlesnake Run, 
which empties into Straits Pond. The other end of these 
lots came near to the fences which skirted the marshes in 
the region of Peck's Meadow, leaving a broad highway. 

A certain tree called " Bread and Cheese Tree " * was 
standing near Rattlesnake Run upon a straight extension 
of King Street, and a broad way six rods wide was to run 
from this tree to Lily Pond. Only a part of this way, 
King Street, has ever been built for travel. 

When fifty lots had been laid out, then the surveyor 
began to measure the remainder of the eighty-three on 
the southwest side of that broad way. The western 
ends of the first eight of these lots came against Turkey 
Meadow, which had already been granted, and against 
the timber commons that had been reserved two or three 
years before. The remaining twenty-four lots were a 
mile long, stretching between King Street and a way 
parallel to it, which was laid out from James Hill, near 
Turkey Hill, perpendicularly towards the colony line. 

The last lot of this Second Division lay flat against a 
highway five rods wide which is almost an extension of 
Pond Street, running through the woods west of the pond, 
and which is still reserved, though never yet opened for 
travel. 

There was still left a tract of land as large as either of 

♦Perhaps this is another bill of fare perpetuated. 



154 



HISTORY 0.F COH ASSET. 



the Other two divisions lying in the region of "the Beech- 
woods." Accordingly, on the tenth day of March, 1670, 
three months later than the First Division, they had .this 
Third Division measured off. About half of it is now in 
Hingham, but its western boundary was at that time de- 
termined by the timber grants before mentioned. 

This Third Division had a very rocky region for the 
western part of it, and the fertile Beechwood district for 
the eastern part. Each man, therefore, was given a part 
of each, the bitter with the sweet. 

The most of the rough, unarable lands are now a part 
of Hingham, and the lots which concern us are the first 
fifty-four lots of the Beechwood district with only about 
twenty lots of the rocky district ; because the fifty-fourth 
lot was the limit designated when Cohasset was set off 
from Hingham in the following century. These lots lay 
in long strips like all the Cohasset lots, but their south- 
east ends headed against the colony line. 

There was no direct outlet for these lots to the harbor, 
but the condition of the grant was that every owner should 
have the right of way through the rest. 

Fifty-five years later, April 21,1 726, when the fertile lands 
of Beechwood were settled, those proprietors granted a 
perpetual open way across their lots, leading out to what 
is now Beechwood Street, thus making a nearly straight 
way to the harbor. 

Thus in the fall of 1670 and the spring of the next year, 
when the leaves were off the trees, Lieut. Joshua Fisher,* 
of Dedham, measured off the real estate and determined 



* From Hingham Records : " At a Town meeting holden at Hingham on the 
first day of December 1670 it is ordered and agreed upon by the inhabitants of the 
sayd town of Hingham that all such persons as shall neglect or refuse to make 
payment of their proportion of the charge for surveying their lands and measuring 
out their lots according to the agreement made by the selectmen of the town, with 
Lieut. Joshua Fisher, the selectmen of the town shall have power to sell, and are 
hereby impowered to sell so much of the wood and timber off any of their lots 
as shall pay their proportion of the charges about laying out their lands." 



DIVIDING THE LAND. 



155 



for us the contour of our properties, and directed the 
public highways for perpetual travel. It is interesting to 
note, however, that the two cross highways least in use, 
Sohier Street and Pond Street, are the ones that Fisher 
laid out ; while Beechwood Street and North Main Street 
had to be laid out through private lands. Even South 
Main Street, which might easily have been laid out nearly 
straight, as it now is, Fisher provided for along a very 
uneven contour. 

He apparently did not realize that the highway leading 
from town to town would have an ever-increasing need to 
be straight. However, he left enough land for his crooked 
highway fully to reimburse whatever damages private 
owners might claim when the road was properly laid out 
fifteen years later (May, 1685). 

And not only for this correction on South Main Street 
was land enough reserved, but everywhere in the town 
where changes had to be made there was land enough 
reserved by Fisher's plan between the marshes and the 
upland to make good every damage, as well as to furnish 
our present Town Common, and to grant as a bonus to 
individuals who might deserve it for their services. 

Changes in the shape of the lots of Fisher's plan have 
been made, quite as sweeping as in the highways. 

Very few owners can be found to-day whose land has its 
original bounds ; but many pieces of old walls running 
through the woods show the lines bounding the original 
lots. It is plain that the lots which were only twenty-five 
feet wide and a mile long were good for nothing but to be 
sold to the land adjoining, and, furthermore, these mile- 

Joshua Fisher died less than two years from this time, and his inventory " 1672 
20th day, sixth month " includes the following crude surveyors' implements used 
in the division of our land : — 

" Measuring Instruments, Table, Trussell, Index & sights. Loadstone and 
Great Chains jC^-i. 

" One small chain and other small things belonging to that work 4^'. 6d. 

" Total value about ;^i6." 



I 5 6 HIS TOR V OF COHASSE T. 

long strips lay so unevenly upon hills and valleys that 
many of them had to be sold piecemeal. 

But the importance of the work done by the surveyor in 
marking the first ownership of Cohasset uplands rests in 
the fact that individuals from that time forward might 
build for themselves Jiomes, where they would be defended 
by their land titles from every artificial hindrance in gain- 
ing a livelihood. 

5t is to the epoch of home-building therefore that we 
now have come. 



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DIVIDING THE LAND. 



D/ 



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J^ 



u. 



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3*'- 



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XI- 



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24. 2.' 




PARI' OF THE Sixth Division ok Lands, at Rocky Nook, corrected 

TO 1742. 

This bit of land, including a part of Rocky Nook and all of Jerusalem, now 
North Cohasset and Nantasket P. O., was not included in the Fisher plot. 

" The way leading to Hull " is the present Hull Street and is the boundary of 
Cohasset. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE FIRST HOMES. 

IT is the reputation of New Englanders to be good 
home-makers. But such homes as the first settlers in 
Cohasset could have built in the last quarter of the seven- 
teenth century are not the basis for so good a reputation. 
Crude and humble were the first boxes set up in our town 
for the habitation of families ; and yet it is fairly certain 
that none were so crude as a log hut. 

For a half-century it had been the means of livelihood, 
for some Hinghamites to make boards and timber out of 
their forest trees, to ship to Boston and to other places 
where wooden houses were rapidly being needed. Labo- 
rious sawing it was for a man on the top of a log, and 
another in a pit beneath the log, to rub the teeth of a long 
saw up and down, up and down, against the wood until 
the whole length of the log was sawed through ; and then 
to repeat it until several planks were thus rived out of 
each log. 

When Ralph Smith, February i, 1638-39, bargained to 
give "five hundred merchantable cedar boards delivered 
out of the swamp for three acres of planting ground,"* he 
evidently had to work for his land. But thirty-three years 
had passed since then, and boards were probably much 
more in vogue for the floors and walls of houses. 

Shingles, split from short bolts of cedar logs or of white 
pine and then shaved by a large drawknife to a thin edge 
at one end, were made during many a winter before houses 
at Cohasset were wanted. 

* See p. 113, Chapter VI. 

158 



THE FIRST HOMES. I 59 

The joists and rafters and posts and plates were readily 
hewed from small trees, by trimming them to a square 
form. 

The tools in use were some that came from England 
with the first settlers and some that were made by Cham- 
berlin, the blacksmith in Hingham. Their nails, what few 
they used, were all hammered out by the patient smith. 
Their bricks were made of the native mud and sand, 
baked not very well nor moulded very evenly. Lime was 
too scarce to be used for cementing the bricks, so they 
made mortar of mud. 

Theirs was the age of colossal chimneys when hospi- 
tality and comfort were estimated by the size of their fire- 
places. 

Backlogs and firewood grew in limitless quantities in 
every neighborhood, so that no economy of fuel was 
necessary. Indeed, the necessity was to be lavish, for 
those huge chimney throats gulped up the greater part of 
the heat, so that only a small fraction was radiated into 
the chilly rooms. 

But the early Cohasset settlers were the poorer ones 
from the poor settlement of Hingham, venturing here for 
a start in life. Their houses were very small, and the 
chimneys must have been meager samples of masonry com- 
pared with the huge piles that characterized certain other 
communities at that time, and this community at a later 
time.* There is no chimney standing to-day in the town 
that dates earlier than the year 1700 a.d. But there were 
homes here for more than twenty years previous to 1700, 
and we have some authentic records that prove the extreme 
meagerness of some of these homes. 

The exact date of the first migration of families to live 

* In the home of Robert T. Burbank, now standing on the west side of King 
Street, can be seen a good sample of a chimney of last century. 

Fireplaces are built for each room about the central chimney, not only upon the 
ground floor, but in the second story also. 



i6o 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



about Cohasset Harbor can never be ascertained, for the 
valuation lists of Hingham for those years have been lost, 
and whatever enumeration of taxable homes at Cohasset 
might have been made in those lists cannot be known. 

However, it is sure that young couples, sons and daugh- 
ters of the first Hingham planters, settled here soon after 
167 1 upon lands granted to them or to their parents, or 
purchased for small sums of money from grantees that 
had no use for Cohasset. Some of them came on horse- 
back over the cattle trails and cart tracks. 

Materials for building could easily be boated around 

from Hingham 
Harbor; and 
they were at 
least upon land 
which was with- 
in their means 
to own. 

The terrible 
massacres of the 
year 1675, when 
the aborigines 
under the des- 
perate King- 
Philip tried to 
annihilate the invading Anglo-Saxons, did not harm Cohas- 
set.* Captain Michael Pearse, however, who owned all the 
land from Whitehead to the Cove, was a Scituate man at 
this time and fought gallantly in the Narragansett battle 
of December, 1675. John Jacob, on Hingham Plain, was 
shot by an Indian, April 19, 1676. Furthermore, Ibrook 

*The following suggestive record is in the Hingham archives dated October i8, 
1675: " At a meeting of the freemen of Hingham, upon complaint made against 
Joseph, the Indian, and his family who are in this town contrary to the mind of 
most of the inhabitants and on suspicion that he will run away to the enemy to 
our prejudice ; therefore the freemen of the said town meeting passed a clear vote 
that the constable forthwith seize the said Indian and his family and carry them up 
to Boston to be disposed of by the Governor and council as they shall see cause." 




Photo, Harriet A. Xi. kfisoii. 



Old Souther Home, Pond Street. 
Supposed to be a sample of many of the first homes. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 1 6 I 

Tower with his father kept a stronghold in Hingham 
against the Indians in that war; but no touch of that 
trouble reached Cohasset. 

Perhaps there were no settlers here at that time ; and 
if so, then the date of Cohasset beginnings must be the 
close of the King Philip War, when stray settlers were no 
more in danger from the savages in this region. 

It woiild be natural to suppose that the first settlers 
upon Cohasset land would be in those parts nearest Hing- 
ham, on the fringe of the mother settlement. Indeed, the 
Turkey Meadows lying within the present boundaries of 
this town had been so many years used for hay and grass 
that one might fairly suppose some farmhouse to have 
sprung up in that vicinity before the uplands v/ere di- 
vided. There was one Perth McFarlin, who was granted 
a house lot on the north side of Turkey Hill as early as 
1669, and three years after that a place for his barn was 
granted him. But the town boundary in that region has 
been changed so that none of Cohasset is on the north 
side of Turkey Hill; and McFarlin's home, though it 
might possibly have been a Cohasset one formerly, is now 
foreign land. 

There was one man as early as 1676 who seems to have 
lived a bachelor on King Street, not far from the pond. 
It was Clement Bates, a son of James Bates ; and his death, 
while yet a young man, left his property to be probated 
by his father. 

In those public documents, under the date April 20, 1676, 
one can find the following items of Clement Bates' estate: — 

£ s. d. 

Wearing apparel „ 5. o. o. 

Two acres of land with a dwelHng house upon said 

land 45. o. o. 

Three shares in three divisions of land — viz. ist 

3rd & 4th with commons belonging thereto .22. o. o. 

One saddle and bridle ami saddle cloth .... o. 13. o. 



1 62 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

£ s. d. 

One horse o. lo. o. 

One cow 2. o. o. 

Six heifers 7.10. o. 

One Iron pot & hooks 8^\ One meal tub 3jr. Four 

Iron hoops Sj o. 19. o. 

One plow & share & coulter & half chain ... o. 15. o. 

One bolt and ring for a yoke o. 2. o. 

One old chest and other lumber o. 5. o. 

Total 84. 14. o. 

Clement Bates, Jr., was one of the grantees of Cohasset 
real estate five years before his death, and he drew land 
in company with his father, James Bates, and Benjamin 
Bates and Simon Peck. Their lot in the Second Division 
was number seventy-seven, facing upon King Street about 
seventy rods from the pond, the vicinity of the present 
schoolhouse. It is the two acres of this land " with a 
dwelling house upon said land " which probably was meant 
by the second item in the preceding inventory ; for his other 
Cohasset lands are noted in the next item. At that place 
may have been the first house in Cohasset yet ascertained 
from public records, and its value was not over two hun- 
dred dollars. The furniture in it was almost too insignifi- 
cant to mention. His rude bed was worthless. Table 
and chairs deserve no appraisal, even in so careful a list 
as included "one bolt and ring for an ox 3'oke," worth two 
shillings (50 cents). 

His "meal tub," according to custom, kept what coarse 
grist he might procure at the mill in Weymouth for his 
bread and cakes. 

The iron pot mentioned was compelled to furnish alone 
the cheer of a dismal fireplace ; and what a dark scen^ of 
poverty must have been lighted up by the flames that 
cooked his evening morsel after a weary day's labor in the 
wilderness ! 

The poor old nag that was valued at ten shillings 



THE FIRST HOMES. I 63 

($2.50), and called by politeness "a horse," might have 
carried its owner once a week to the Hingham settlement, 
but its journey to the grave must have followed shortly 
its young master. 

It may be an abuse of the word " home " to call such 
a bachelor den one of the first Cohasset homes. There 
were no doubt better specimens contemporaneous with 
this, whose owners did not happen to die at that time, and 
so the detailed inventory of them escaped being perpetu- 
ated in the probate records. 

Seven years later than this, Cornelius Canterbury died, 
and his home was appraised as follows : — 

Nov. 23, 1683. £ X. d. 

Dwelling house and land at Cohassett .... 60. o. o. 
I lot in first division upland 20^ i lot in 2nd 

div. \2jQ 32. o. o. 

I lot* in 2nd division upland 18. o. o. 

7^ acres of meadow at Cohassett 50. o. o. 

12 Swine 8^ 2 beds & bedding 5;^ 13. o. o. 

1 chest & linen 33-f. pewter, brass, tin & Earthen- 

ware 25i- 2. 18. o. 

2 Frying pans 5^-. corn & provision 5^ .... 5. 5. o. 
4 chairs & wooden dishes 7^-. 2 guns 40^'. ... 2. 7. o. 
2 axes I spade 2 hoes i \s. Leather & deer skins 8j. o. 19. o. 

I bill hook & old iron 1$ 7. o. 

I years time in an Indian servant 4. o. o. 

In barrels and lumber at Cohassett 15. o. 

I iron crow 8j-. i crosscut saw ds 14. o. 

Total 190. 5. o. 

Here was the home of a cooper, the trade which most 
of all characterized the Hingham settlers. He was so 
industrious and thrifty that he had two dwellings, one at 
the Hingham settlement and one in Cohasset. Just where 
the latter was cannot be ascertained with certainty. 

Canterbury Street, that runs out of Hull Street at Lam- 

* Is this a mistake, or did he own two lots in the Second Division? 



164 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

bert's Lane towards the west, was not named after Cor- 
nelius Canterbury, for he had been dead more than a 
century before that street was made. 

One of his lots fronted upon the Steep Rocks near the 
estate of the present Edward Wheelwright ; another was 
a strip in the First Division about halfway between Pond 
Street and Beechwood Street. His lot in the Beechwood 
district was about five hundred feet southwest of the 
pond. His house might have been upon any of these, or 
it might have been upon some little patch of land bought 
of some other grantee where he plied his trade of bucket 
and barrel making. At his death he had about four dollars' 
worth of barrels and other cooper stock on hand. 

But perhaps the most interesting item of the inventory 
is the " one year's time in an Indian servant." It may 
have been a Quonahassit Indian whose parents had seen 
John Smith sixty-nine years before. Or perhaps he was 
sold a slave, as many other Indians were sold at the cap- 
ture of them in the King Philip War of 1675. 

His owner might have leased him to Cornelius Canter- 
bury, so that one year was left when Canterbury died 
before the Indian's time was worked out. Several of the 
Cohasset settlers had Indian servants, both male and 
female, to work upon farms or in homes, and here is the 
earliest on record. 

The item of "leather and deerskins" suggests that the 
wild deer was not then exterminated, but roamed our 
forests and made profitable hunting for the settlers. 
Nearly a century later than this, in the year 1754, a "deer 
reaver," * Jonathan Pratt, was annually appointed by the 
town. The "two guns" of the inventory, if not the old 
matchlock variety, were at least the clumsy flintlocks, 
which were persuaded to go off when they were amiable, 
by a spark struck from the steel pan at the side of the 

♦Scituate appointed men in 1784 for the preservation and increase of deer, 
(Deane's History of Scituate, p. iii.) 



THE FIRST HOMES. I 65 

barrel with a piece of flint held in the jaws of a spring 
hammer. Possibly these were of the same pattern as the 
fowling pieces first brought to the colony, the barrels of 
which were five and a half feet long. But the customary 
way of bagging game was by traps, so that a great deal of 
leisure at short range might be practised in dispatching 
the captured animals with these old flintlocks. 

The hoe and the spade mentioned in the inventory are 
evidences of the more peaceful toil that compelled the 
soil to furnish food. The corn which grew was no doubt 
cut by that hook-nosed heavy knife called the "billhook," 
and the two frying pans that cooked the corncakes made 
scanty luxury. 

Those " wooden dishes " were probably shaped by the 
cooper from some good pieces of Cohassct trees ; added 
to the four chairs, they amounted to seven shillings' worth. 
Think of a Cohasset household to-day possessed of only 
four chairs ! Probably these four were for the " best 
room," while benches and settles were used in the kitchen, 
and were not worth enough to enumerate. 

But those days of poverty and simplicity deserve some- 
thing better at our hands than a touch of disdain ; for those 
early home-builders made part of our present comfort, and 
despite the meagerness of their lives, their struggle for 
existence in the face of such great odds reveals, as well as 
ours may, the fundamental heroism of living. 

Among the earliest scattered homes of Cohasset was 
that of Daniel Lincoln, who is the first one to be found in 
the Hingham records designated as a Cohasset resident. 

" Daniel Lincoln of Conohasset " was mentioned in the 
year 1685, when Main Street was being laid out. He was 
thirty-two years of age at that time, and the little family 
included his wife Elizabeth and his two little boys, Oba- 
diah, aged six years, and Hezekiah, four. 

Through these and a younger daughter, Elizabeth, who 
married Nathaniel Nichols of Jerusalem Road (i7io-ii),a 



I 6 6 HIS TOR V OF COHA SSE 1 '. 

large number of Cohasset citizens at the north end of the 
town have descended. Their home was in the neighbor- 
hood of our central cemetery, upon lot seventy-one, which 
had been granted originally to Rev. Peter Hobart of 
Hingham. 

The committee that laid out the course of North Main 
Street on May 4, 1685, turned it westward through the 
end of this lot diagonally to about where Ripley Road now 
joins the street. ' 

For this stretch of highway, about one thousand feet 
long, the committee gave to " Daniel Lincoln of Conahas- 
set a piece of land containing one acre and a half or there- 
about butting upon the meadow of Mary Hearsey (widow) 
easterly and upon the highway westerly." 

This acre and a half evidently is the hummock of land 
where the home of Charles S. Bates now stands ; and it 
may be remembered as one of those gravel moraines made 
during the melting period of the great glacier when Little 
Harbor was covered by a huge fragment of ice against the 
irregular edges of which the gravel Ridges were heaped. 

Here at the shore of Little Harbor was a landing place* 
for Daniel Lincoln's boat which might carry his loads to 
and from Hingham Harbor ; also near this same place 
there were two well-worn trails leading to the old home in 
Hingham, one skirting the shore somewhat as Jerusalem 
Road now does, and the other the direct one along the 
line of North Main Street. Here f lived Daniel Lincoln, 
a thrifty, hard-working farmer, for more than forty years. 

He lived to see several grandchildren well introduced to 
life, and to see the little community grown to several hun- 
.dred inhabitants, having their own little church on the 
common near Meeting-House Pond. 

The property which he accumulated may be guessed 

* This tiny wharf in Little Harbor was referred to in the inventory of William 
Hersey's property, December 18, 1691, wherein a piece of marsh is described" at 
Conahasset by Daniel Lincoln's loading place." 

t Somewhere near the east end of lot seventy-one. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



167 



from the following articles copied from his will dated 
July 2-], 1727: — 

To wife Elizabeth, household goods, horses sheep and all my 

cattle except two oxen. 
To daughter Elizabeth Nichols ^^150 ($750). 
To grandson Moses Lincoln ten acres. 
To grandson Daniel Nichols ;!^5 ($25.00). 
To granddaughter Priscilla Lincoln ;^5 (1^25.00). 
To grandson Daniel Lincoln my duelling house and all the land 

joining, also the barn and land, and two acres of salt 

meadow. 

It could not have been but a year or two later than the 
settlement of Daniel Lincoln that Mordecai Lincoln, his 
younger brother, settled at the mouth of Bound Brook, 
two miles away from Daniel. 

This Mordecai was the ancestor of President Abraham 
Lincoln, and one of his houses near Bound Brook is still 
the home of a Cohasset Lincoln.* 

Mordecai was too enterprising to remain a farmer, but 
soon commenced to establish mills upon Bound Brook, 
both where it lies in Scituate and where it flows through 
Cohasset lands. 

As early as 1691-92 he purchased of Matthew Gannett 
of Scituate, for seven pounds ($35.00), one half of the 
place, where he proposed putting a dam at the mouth of 
Bound Brook, with a half ownership of the brook and of 
such land as the mill pond would cover after the dam 
should be built. It was a good site for cornmill or saw- 
mill, to supply the needs of the growing settlements at 
North Scituate and Cohasset. 

The nearest gristmill for the Cohasset farmers was the 
one at the outlet of Straits Pond, built in 1679, which 
could be run only when the tide was out of Lyford's 
Liking. 

There was need of so enterprising a mechanic as Mor- 

*The home of James Dallas Lincoln. 



1 68 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



decai Lincoln to use the convenient water power of Bound 
Brook. At least four places on the brook were favorable 
for mill sites : one where Hackett's mill now is in 
Hingham * just over the southwest line of Cohasset, and 
three more on the way down to the mouth of the brook. 
At these latter three Mordecai Lincoln before he died 
had become a proprietor of gristmills, sawmills, and an 
iron smelter with its forge. He was by trade a black- 




TuRTLE Island Sawmill, Beechwood. 
Built 1813-14. A successor of Mordecai Lincoln's mill. 

smith, and a pair of heavy andirons, probably of his own 
workmanship, are still kept in the house he gave to his 
son Isaac. 

His ingenuity in utilizing the power of Bound Brook is 
well illustrated by a tradition about his three milldams. 
During the summer months the brook dwindles to a very 
weak stream of water, but even this little power was so 

* Formerly lot fifty-six of the second part of Division Three. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



169 



economically used as to do a full week's work from Sunday 
to Sunday. His method of doing it was to shut the up- 
permost dam at Turtle Island in Beechwood until a good- 
sized pond was formed. Then on Monday and Tuesday 
the Turtle Island mill would work under full power. The 
water that passed on down stream was caught at the second 
dam, where the Morris ice pond now is in Scituate ; there, 
for two days, Wednesday and Thursday, another mill wheel 
was turned. 

Again at the Bound Rock dam the water was recuper- 
ated for the work of Friday and Saturday, when it was 
finally released to the ocean. It is said that " a mill never 
grinds with the water that has passed," but Mordecai Lin- 
coln's mills made the water do triple service. 

About halfway between these two Lincoln brothers, 
Daniel at the north end and Mordecai at the south, stood 
a dwelling house at Jacob's Meadow near Cold Spring, 
somewhat more than a stone's throw from the present 
Catholic Church. This dwelling was built earlier than the 
year 1693 ; for in that year John Jacob bequeathed it and 
the barn to his son* John, only fourteen years of age. The 
son, who afterwards became the first deacon of the Co- 
hasset church, was obviously too young to use it, and the 
father could not have used it as a permanent dwelling, for 
he lived in the old homestead on Hingham Plain. 

But,f whoever might have been the first tenant, the 
house itself was one of the earliest recorded dwellings in 
Cohasset. 

There is an interesting event connected with this place 
at Cold Spring, one of the first instances of public road 
building. It was a contract, October 21, 1672, between a 
committee of the town and John Jacob, Sr., by which the 

*This youngest son of John Jacob was named for the first son John, who was 
slain by the Indians near his father's house in Hingham, April 19, 1676, aged 22 
years. 

1 1 have found out that Francis Harlow occupied this house at the time of the 
will. (See History of Hanover.) 



I/O HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

latter was to build a corduroy bridge seventy-two feet long 
across the swampy land where now the railway intersects 
Spring Lane. 

The bridge was to be made of timbers laid on top of the 
spongy swamp and covered by gravel for the use of hay 
carts and wood carts that hauled these Cohasset products 
to the landings at the water's edge. Loading places had 
been ordered by the town Christmas Day of 1669, to be 
set out by a committee* of five. 

There were at least two of these loading places at our 
Cove, and the committee had also laid out cartways lead- 
ing to them. Our present Elm Street skirting the great 
meadow was probably one of these earliest cart tracks. 
Another was laid out in 1675 on the opposite side of the 
meadow, where Summer Street now meanders towards the 
harbor. This latter was lying across a salt marsh " where 
the carts were formerly driven over in a narrow place of 
the said .marsh " reaching Gulf Island, north of the pres- 
ent store of M. B. Stetson. 

These roads, constructed immediately after the division 
of the lands, were of course utilized by the first home- 
builders, and this bridge of John Jacob's made the cart 
travel between Cohasset and Scituate much easier for 
whatever farmers were settling in that neighborhood. 
When this bridge was built a pond was in existence a 
little way above it, and the meadow was fenced in, as 
appears from the wording of the contract. 

John Jacob had to travel over here from Hingham to 
perform his contract, and his remuneration was two small 
pieces of upland lying in the immediate vicinity of his 
meadows. 

Another evidence besides the bridge that testified to 
the growing demands of the first homes, was the laying out 
of a straight main thoroughfare to Scituate on one side 
and to Hingham on the other. 

* Captain Josliua Hobart, Ensign Thaxter, Edmontl Hobart, Matthew Gushing, 
and John Jacob. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



171 



The original highway, reserved according to the Fisher 
plot, lay along the crooked eJge of upland next to the 
marshes ; and along here the two-wheeled carts had for- 
merly picked their way outside the marsh fences. 

In 1682, ten years later than the bridge contract, a com- 
mittee was appointed to lay out this more direct way 
through thirty-four lots of the First Division from Jacob's 
Meadow to the meadow near where a little brook now 
crosses South Main Street, a hundred yards or more south 
of Cushing's greenhouse. 

Each owner of a lot was reimbursed for the highway 
cut through his land four rods wide by property lying at 
the edge of the marshes, a strip which had not been 
divided by the Fisher plan. About half of these, from 
the twelfth to the twenty-eighth, were " to run down to the 
meadow fence as it now stands," said the committee, "with 
this proviso, that all the proprietors of the meadows shall 
have liberty of free egress and regress into their meadows 
in the old highway as they have had formerly for the cart- 
ing of their hay, . . . and also that all the proprietors of wood 
and timber on the northeastward side of said highway 
now laid out by the committee shall have free egress and 
regress in the said way as formerly." 

This highway, which is nowadays so well traveled, was 
laid out four rods wide by marking trees on each side 
with the letter "H." The northward continuation of this 
highway after crossing Jacob's Bridge lay in the reserve 
area along Great Neck and the present Town Common 
until it reached the seventy-first lot beyond Sohier Street, 
where Daniel Lincoln was then living. 

At this point the con?mittee turned straight towards 
Hingham, making the angle as we now see it, and reim- 
bursing Daniel Lincoln, John Farrar, Ibrook Tower,* and 
others for as much land as this diagonal highway four rods 
wide took from them as it passed through the First Division 

* Ibrook Tower had purchased lof seventy-three. 



172 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



and then through the Second Division until it reached the 
home road at Turkey Meadow. The latter end of this 
road lay along the north side of Turkey Meadow to the 
present Hull Street, and is still in use under the name 
Cedar Street. From Cedar Street to Little Harbor this 
highway, laid out May 4, 1685, is continued to this day as 
North Main Street, and conforms probably to the original 
cattle trail leading to the Cohasset meadows. 

Among the first homes that of Israel Nichols the 
weaver, on the south side of Straits Pond, where Jeru- 
salem Road now runs, ought to be recounted. On March 
25, 1695, "the selectmen appointed Samuel Jacobs to lay 
out a highway for Israel Nichols near his now dwelling 
house at Cohassett." * 

How long since his dwelling house had been in Cohasset 
no one can tell, -but it had been built upon Green Hill 
sixteen years before, and at some winter between these 
two dates, 1679 and 1695, it had been sledded across the 
ice on Straits Pond. 

It stood until five years ago the oldest house in the 
town, when it was destroyed. Israel's son, Nathaniel, 
married Elizabeth, the oldest daughter of Daniel Lincoln, 
and thus were these two first homes tied together across 
two miles of rocky wilderness. 

It may be a fair surmise that the journeys of young 
Nathaniel at the beginning of the eighteenth century to 
the home of Elizabeth at Little Harbor were along the 
shore trail where Jerusalem Road now winds its tortuous 
way. 

The land at the sea border of these lots was left for a 
town highway ; but long before it was opened for the travel 
of carts, the children of Israel Nichols and those of 

*This is one of the earliest cases of the abbreviated spelling of the Indian name 
of Cohasset. The first instance known is in the year 1682 in Nathaniel Baker's 
probated inventory, where the spelling is " Cohasset." In Cornelius Canterbury's 
inventory in the probate records, November 23, 1683, the spelling is with two ^'s — 
Cohassett." 



THE FIRST HOMES. I 73 

Daniel Lincoln paced out the rough distance on their 
mutual visits. 

Besides the Lincoln and the Nichols families there were 
probably other families fully as early, about whom the 
records available give no certain data.* The Hingham 
tax lists for the years under consideration have disappeared 
from the town's archives, so that many valuable clews have 
been lost. 

There is one settler, however, of much importance to 
the development of Cohasset whose residence here as 
early as Daniel Lincoln's has the strongest probability, 
though without record. It was Aaron Pratt, whose de- 
scendants at the present day are to be counted by dozens 
in the town. 

It is known that this Aaron, the sonf of the famous 
Phineas whose run to Plymouth saved Wessagusset, pur- 
chased of Joshua Hobart in the year 1683 lot thirty-seven, 
reaching from the Gulf a mile back into the woods towards 
Scituate Pond. 

The lot was a large one, over two hundred feet wide, 
and that part of it on South Main Street which is the 
home of the present Robert B. Pratt has been kept in the 
family name for these two hundred and fourteen years. 

Aaron Pratt's first child was born in 1685, and it is 
probable that this Cohasset property was a home from the 
year of its purchase. His family of fifteen children gave 
him sufficient motives for an energetic career of farming. 

His home, according to tradition, | was a house two 

*Thomas Lincoln, Sr., in his will (1688) gave to his son Joseph, Cohasset lands, 
and directed that they should " be entered on immediately." 

tThe mother of Aaron was Mary Priest, daughter of the Degory Priest who 
came to Plymouth in the Mayflower and who died January i, 1621. The widow of 
Degory Priest married a Hollander, Cuthbert Cuthbertson, in Leyden, November 
13, 1621, and came to this country in 1623, with her husband and two daughters, 
Mary and Sarah Priest. (New York Genealogical and Biographical Record, July, 
1897. Article by E. S. Atwood.) 

I See Phinehas Pratt and Some of His Descendants, published 1897, Boston 
by Eleazer F. Pratt. 



174 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Stories high with a gable roof, the lower story of stone 
and the upper one of wood. The windows were of a 




Squire Pratt's Office, Beechwooh, 
Descendant of the original Aaron Pratt. 



small diamond pattern of glass inserted in lead sashes. 
Rut such a house could not have been his first one, for 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



175 



it was quite beyond his needs until his family had in- 
creased. 

His third son, Aaron, was a boy twelve years old at 
about the time Mordecai Lincoln built the sawmill on 
Bound Brook, but he grew straightway into a veritable 
second edition of his energetic father, so that he owned 
not only mills, but real estate and merchandise to a 
remarkable amount. A pair of balances for weighing 
gold and silver has come into the town's collection of his- 
torical relics from these two Aarons, and the tradition of 
their service in weighing precious metals before the days 
of coining attest the business success achieved by these 
first generations of the Pratt family. 

It may not be out of place to refer here to a son of this 
first home who gained a public eminence unsurpassed as a 
jurist in the New England colonies, and afterwards as the 
colonial Chief Justice of New York. It was Benjamin 
Pratt, the fourteenth child of Aaron. 

In early youth he was apprenticed to a mechanic. 
When about nineteen years of age he fell from a tree and 
injured his leg severely, so that it had to be amputated. 
He became a student at Harvard College, placed at the 
foot of the list because of the lowly social position of his 
family ; but before he died his career had carried him so 
high as an astute legal authority that the highest Harvard 
distinction was accorded to him. 

But the brilliant career of this Cohasset cripple came 
too late for his father Aaron to witness. Twenty-five 
years before the appointment of Chief Justice Benjamin 
Pratt, the hard-working father had gone to his long rest. 
The inventory of his personal property given below may 
stand for the wealthiest of the first homes, though it was 
taken a generation later than those already given : — 

£ s. d. 

Wearing apparel 43^. Cash £,\\. beds & 

bedding ^23. iij-. Linen 66x 40. 00. 00 



176 HIS TORY OF CO HA SSE T. 

Chairs 1 5 J. pewter 34^. 6^^. Brass 42 j-. Iron jQ s. d. 

& Earthenware & Glass 93J 9. 04. 06 

Woodenware \%s. tubs &c z^s. bd. brls of 

Cider 5 9^-. Cupboard 4^'. chests 2 yx. . 6. 11, 06 

Tables I Si'. 2 spinning wheels Si', books i5i-. 3. i. o 

Tools, horse & timber chains, steelyards, barrel 

of gun &c S. 7. 6 

Saddle & bridle 25^. bags 2s. 6d. Cartwheels 

40^. looking glass i^s 4. 2. 6 

3 Cows 3 Calves ^Q^iZ ^ Cattle ^d> 2 Swine 

70X. Provisions in house ;^5 .... 49. 10. o 
Home lands _;^i20o Second pt of 3rd Div. 

;^i20 1320. o. o 

Lands in the Second Division 45. o. o 

Will proved Mch 9, 1736. 1484. 17. o 

Appraisers Joshua Bates 

John Jacobs 
Benjamin Lincoln. 

One can hardly suppress a comment upon so interesting 
an inventory. The "books" on the list may have given 
the first literary inspiration of that crippled son, and so 
may deserve perpetual honor ; for this is the only instance 
noted where books found a place in the early inventories. 

The " two spinning wheels " shared in the prevailing 
energy of that household, and must have been set whizzing 
many a day while the daughters of Aaron Pratt held the 
rolls of wool to the spindle, making yarn from the fleeces 
of Cohasset sheep to clothe Cohasset farmers. 

It is doubtful if any other household accomplished so 
much of the ordinary business of living as did this family 
near the summit of South Main Street. 

Another family of smaller proportions (only twelve chil- 
dren), but of great vigor, is yet to be mentioned, that of 
Ibrook Tower, the progenitor of scores of the present 
inhabitants of the town. 



THE FTRST HOMES. 



177 



His home was near Daniel Lincoln's on North Main 
Street, on lot number sixty-six, which he received from his 
father, John Tower, and which remains to this day in the 
family name. 

He was selectman in the year 1699, representing the 
interests of Cohasset settlers. He was a cooper, and 
worked in his cooper shed at home whenever he was not 
engaged upon his farming. 

His wife was Margaret Hardin of Braintree, and with 




Photo, Mrs. E. E. Y.Wv. 

Old CuRiosrrv Shop. 
Spinning wheels, warming pan, pewter dishes, etc. 

a family of several children they came to Cohasset at 
about the same time that Daniel Lincoln came with his 
young wife. Both families had a son born in the year 
1 68 1, whom they named Hezekiah, and the next daughter 
of each family received the name Elizabeth. This is 
either a strange coincidence or a neighborly compliment. 
If there was anything more than an accident in this 



lyS HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

naming, we can infer that both families were living here 
before the year 1681.* 

Of the Tower family there were twelve children, and of 
the Lincoln six, so that a good deal of company might 
be had without traveling far. 

At the death of Ibrook Tower, November 28, 1731, his 
property was so divided that Hezekiah got some of the King 
Street end of the lot. There the ruins of an old well and 
a cellar may be seen to-day marking the home of this sec- 
ond generation. Other lands bordering on Lily Pond fell 
to this son, so that for many years the beautiful body of 
water was called " Kiah Tower's Pond." 

The following inventory does not show the complete 
household furnishing of Ibrook Tower's home ; for his 
second wife, Patience, brought certain personal effects 
which were to continue to be her property, as the written 
agreement of their betrothal specified : — 

£ s. d. 
Apparel ^2. 15J. 6^. bed, 2 coverlids, i blanket 

I sheet, I bolster 10. 5. 6 

Lumber in cellar 23^'. Woodenware By. dd. 2 

Chairs 6^ i. 19. 6 

1 chest, Table, Bedstead, Tubs in the chamber . 2. 10. o 
Trundle bedstead 6i. 2 brass kettles & warm- 
ing pan ^4. 2S 4. 8. o 

2 Trammels & ironware £2. 6s. Frying pan 6^. 

Pewter ;^2. 135- 5. 5. o 

Small brass skillet & money scales 9^. Iron pot 

\2S. Ironware £2 3. i. 

* In John Ripley's will, dated January i, 1683, are these words : " half an acre of 
fresh Meadow at Connihasset near the house of Ibrook Tower." 

The tradition in the Tower family that Ibrook Tower lived on Deer Hill is hard 
to reconcile with John Ripley's statement that his fresh meadow was " near the 
house of Ibrook Tower." That fresh meadow was probably a part of the Great 
Neck meadow north of the railroad station. 

Since writing the above I have been told by Abraham H. Tower that some 
foundation stones of an ancient dwelling were excavated from a place near his 
flower bed on the southeast side of his present home by the Common. This foun- 
dation, I believe, was Ibrook Tower's. 



THE FIRST HOMES. 



179 



£ 


s. d. 


17- 


15- 


988. 


0. 



I Cow j[^i. 5 J. I Ox ^9. 2 swine j[^\. \os. 
Land Meadow &: Swamp Orchards & fences, 74 
acres 

Total 1033- 2. o 

This home and the others already set forth make up the 
verifiable first homes of our town. 

That there were others which had crept in before the 
year 1700 we may be sure, but whose and where they 
were it would be difficult to ascertain. 

The Beal families in the vicinity of Turkey Hill per- 
haps deserve a place in this chapter ; for the two brothers, 
John and Lazarus, sons of Jeremiah, established their 
homes at what is now North Cohasset a few years after 
our first settlers. 

John began married life in 1686 and his brother three 
years later, but the places where they located are not now 
within the boundary of Cohasset. The •' Beal " house, 
which now stands a little south of the North Cohasset 
railway station, is said to have been built in the year 1690. 

For many years they and their descendants were in- 
cluded among the taxpayers of this region, and when the 
community became a precinct they were a part of it ; but 
a narrative of what is now Cohasset may properly omit 
those lands outside. The few homes which truly may be 
called the first were established before the year 1700, 
and they nestled within the primeval forest in cleared 
patches as hostages given* to wild nature, guaranteeing 
that those men were in earnest. One is forced to rely 
upon imagination to picture the condition of those homes, 
for public records and private documents are almost 
wholly wanting to furnish data of information. 

But whose imagination can picture adequately that 
frontier life ? 

Coarse garments, poorly cooked food, no carpets, no 



i8o 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



pictures, puny flickering candles, no wagons for the 
streets, no streets for wagons except rutty cartways wind- 
ing among stumps and stones, — these and a thousand 
other privations were the lot of the first home-builders. 

Wild animals beset them, increasing their trials. 
Wolves were so plentiful and so deadly to sheep and 
calves that a bounty of several shillings was paid many 
years* upon their heads. Enoch Whiton, in South 




Photo, Mrs. E. E. Ellms. 

Curved Skttle with Candle Shelf. Pewter Tankard, Porringer, Flax 
Wheel, Foot Stove, Candle Snuffer and Pan. 

Hingham, killed as many as eight wolves one year (1687), 
for which he was rewarded twenty dollars. 

There are at least two wolf pits within our own town 

* In 1648 the town ordered, as the General Court at Boston had required, " that 
if any man either English or Indian shall kill a Wolf within the bounds of this 
town, he to bring the head of the wolf and nail it up at the meeting house, he shall 
have for every wolf so killed twenty shillings." 

January 1,1664: " It is ordered by the town that any person who shall kill a 
wolf or wolves within the bounds of the town shall have twenty shillings allowed 
him for each wolf." 



THE FIRST HOMES. l8l 

bearing silent testimony to these pests. One is back of 
Town Hill, a half mile west of King Street, in the wood 
lot of Samuel James, and the other is in Beechwood, west 
of Beechwood Street, in the land of Aaron Pratt, a quarter 
mile from his dwelling. 

These pits were dug six or eight feet deep and covered 
with brush to conceal their treachery. Some bits of a 
sheep's carcass were so placed above the pit as to lure a 
hungry wolf to step where he would drop into it, where he 
might be killed by the hunter. 

The lands in which such pits were well known became 
called "the wolf pit " or "the wolpit," and they invite a 
multitude of inferences about the wolves and the farmers 
and the farms of those early days. 

Sheep as well as swine and cattle were the mainstay of 
some settlers. The cutting of cord wood or timber to be 
shipped away was another substantial industry. 

Any way and every way that an honorable ingenuity 
might devise for feeding and clothing their families was 
resorted to by the coopers and farmers and cordwainers 
and millwrights that first came here to set up their 
hearthstones. 

For nearly fifty years from the time the land was 
divided the people who came here suffered a certain 
severity of hardship because of their far separation from 
the mother village of Hingham. Their struggles, from 
the year 1700 until they became numerous enough to be a 
recognized community, are reserved for the next chapter. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 

ONE marked difference between the commencement 
of Hingham and that of Cohasset was in the matter 
of self-government. 

Hingham ruled itself, chose its minister, and established 
its own school from the beginning. Not so with Cohasset. 
Two generations of children grew up in the first homes of 
this place before the authority was gained to have a 
church and school of their own. The struggles to free 
themselves from the control of Hingham and to gain the 
autonomy of a precinct are worthy of a careful narrative. 

Previous to the year 1700 there were perhaps only a 
half-dozen homes in all this region, and their isolation 
from the school and church privileges of Hingham was a 
serious one. 

The girls grew up in the homes without learning to 
read or to write. Common drudgeries of the farm were 
their only teaching. This, however, might be endured on 
behalf of the girls, for those were the times when women 
were neglected ; but it was unbearable to have sons unable 
to read or to write. These families paid taxes for the 
town schoolmaster, but their boys could not travel so far 
to receive his instruction and they came to be " back- 
woods " boys. By some hook or crook they learned, how- 
ever, the rudiments, for they could sign their names to 
deeds when the time came in after years to transfer 
property. 

The same weary miles kept our fathers from the privi- 
leges of church. Yet their taxes had to be paid, and 
when the present Hingham meeting-house was built, 168 1, 
the share of the burden falling upon Cohasset shoulders 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 183 

had to be borne.* It was hard to go four or five miles to 
church, for not every one could afford a horse to ride. 
There is a sweet legend of brotherly kindness and poverty 
that comes down to us from those early days. 

One man who owned a horse shared with his poorer 
neighbor by the old-fashioned method of " riding and 
tieing." 

The first man, and his wife or daughter upon the pillion 
behind him, rode along the crooked old way towards 
Hingham about half the distance; then dismounting, 
they tied their steed to a tree at the roadside and walked 
on towards the meeting-house. Meanwhile the second 
couple, wearied by their long walk, reached the horse and, 
mounting him, rested upon his back while the animal 
finished the journey to the church. 

Thus the four came together for their weekly refresh- 
ment to the house of God. 

In those days a meeting-house was more than a place of 
worship ; it was a house of meeting for isolated and lonely 
farmers, where all the comforts of meeting, soul to soul, 
might be enjoyed. 

Talking about fellow citizens, about crops, about cattle, 
about all the immediate concerns of their toilsome days, 
was refreshing to men and women of all grades. 

In those days, when no newspapers retailed the world's 
affairs to the remotest denizens of its woods, when every 
incident of human life had to have a personal purveyor to 
make it known, then a meeting-house where men and 

* The following are some of the men who were assessed to build the Hingham 
meeting-house, 1681, and who became Cohasset settlers : — 

ASSESSMENT. 

£ s. d. 

Israel Nichols 2 15 

Daniel Lincoln 2 15 

Joseph Bates i 

Mordecai Lincoln i 4 

John Farrar 2 14 7 

I brook Tower I 10 

John Jacob 12 17 11 



I 84 HI ST OR V OF COHASSE T. 

women could gain the social life which they craved was a 
double blessing. It drew them into the very midst of earthly 
interests, while it lifted them above the things of the earth. 

To have a minister and a schoolmaster was the simplest 
necessity of every New England community. Conse- 
quently, when the first homes of Cohasset came to realize 
that they formed a community, they felt it necessary to 
have their own church and school. But how could they 
afford it.? For a whole generation before the year 1700 
they had paid school and church taxes without a fair 
amount of privilege in return, and now after that time a 
number of new settlers had gathered about our Cove and 
had paid taxes for another whole generation without any 
adequate benefit from Hingham. 

It is not to be wondered at that in the early part of the 
eighteenth century some of these citizens claimed the 
right to a church and school that the whole town of Hing- 
ham should support among them. 

For these many years they had paid taxes for privileges 
never received, and now they asked privileges somewhat 
more than their own taxes could pay for. It seemed to some 
a fair reimbursement for past payments ; but by a charac- 
teristic stroke of human nature, Hingham refused ! 

The increase in the number of Cohasset settlers during 
the first ten years of that century added much weight to 
their claims. 

As early as the year 171 1* there were thirty-six poll 

* The valuation list for the year 1711 is the earliest one I have been able to find. 
By the kindness of George Lincoln of Hingham, who owns it, I have made the 
accompanying list of property from the original valuation list. The list for the year 
1708, which also Mr. Lincoln has, is only fragmentary. The names and tax 
amounts of the 1708 hst are as follows : — 





£s. d. 




£s. d. 


Stephen Lasell 


3 6 


Daniel Lincoln 


108 


Israel Nichols 


I 5 2 


Obadiah Lincoln 


4 " 


Jacob Loring 


8 3 


Joseph Bates 


15 8 


Lennox Beverly 


84 


Gezaiah Stoddard 


3 3 


John Farrar 


4 2 


John Whiton 


3 



The rest of the names are torn out. 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



185 



taxes paid, making a community nearly as numerous as the 
first settlement at Bare Cove, where a meeting-house had 
been an unquestioned necessity. 

LIST OF PROPERTY TAXED IN THE YEAR 1711, IN THE COHASSET 
PART OF HINGHAM. 





1 


3 


Land. 


0. 



73 





c 

X 




S 



u 


4) 
73 


6 

c 

"5 







■a 


CS 


3 
1 




Joseph Barber . . 


I 












I 




I 








Joseph Bates . . 


3 




6 


8 


20 




4 


6 


8 


IS 


2 




Joshua Bates . . 








2 


6 




2 


2 


5 








Edward Battles. . 
Gershom Ewell . 
John Farrar . . . 






I 


3 


6 




I 




3 




1 


works 


John Farrar, Jr. . 








I 


8 




I 


2 


3 








John Franklin . , 


























Frances Horswell . 






2 


2y2 


7 




I 


2 


4 








John Jacob . . . 






6 


2 


20 




2 


6 


3 


10 






Thomas James . . 


*• 




3 


3 


20 




2 


5 


5 


10 


2 




Ebenezer Kent , . 






5 




















Stephen Lasell . . 








3 


4 




I 






10 






Margaret Leavitt . 














I 




6 








Daniel Lincoln. . 






7 


8 


25 




2 


6 


4 


20 


2 




Hezekiah Lincoln . 






2 


I 






I 


2 


2 








Obadiah Lincoln . 
Mordecai Lincoln. 


Seitu- 
ate 




I 


3 


30 




I 


4 


I 




! 


Iron 

works 

and corn 


Sarah Lincoln . . 






3 


3 














( 


mill 


Israel Nichols . . 






2 




30 




2 


I 


9 


30 


2 




Nathaniel Nichols 












I 


I 




2 








John Orcutt . . . 








2 


26 




I 


4 


3 




3 




Thomas Orcutt 








2 


3 






2 


2 








Aaron Pratt . . . 






4 




30 




I 


4 


4 


20 


I 




Aaron Pratt, Jr. . 


























James Ray . . . 


























Joseph Souther . 














I 




I 






works 


Samuel Stoddard . 






















1 


Stephen Stoddard . 


J 




y^ 


^Vi 


3 




I 




3 




t 

I 


Joseph Thorne . . 


























1 brook Tower . . 


1 




2 


4 


96 




2 


2 


5 


98 


I 




Hezekiah Tower . 


I 
























John Tower . , . 






I 


3 


5 


I 


I 




3 


? 


■> 




Philip Wilcut . 


























George Wilson . . 




I 




I 






I 




I 









i86 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



There were twenty-two houses that might send their 
occupants to a meeting-house if they only had one near. 
Besides the taxes upon their lands and houses they paid 
taxes that year upon forty-eight oxen, seventy-eight cows, 
thirty-one horses, two hundred and thirteen sheep, and 
fourteen swine. 

The total payment into the town coffers for property 
assessment was about one hundred and eighty dollars ; 
and the thirty-six polls, at ten shillings each, made about 
ninety dollars more. 

This was only one year's experience at the disagreeable 
business of paying for what they could not get. 




Photo, Anrif V.. nartwill. 

Where the Sea lashes the Rock. 



Moreover, these settlers were developing a solid nucleus 
of a business community. At their harbor or ship cove, 
as they called it, the enterprise of "shipbuilding" had 
already begun. 

One George Wilson* had obtained the privilege to 
build a vessel at the Cove as early as 1708 (May 6). 

* Solomon Lincoln's History of Hingham says that " Wm. Pitts had liberty from 
the selectmen to build ships and other vessels at Konohasset in 1675," p. 8, note. 



• THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 1 8/ 

Also Joseph Souther, another settler, was granted the 
same privilege only a month later, and a committee of 
three was appointed to locate their separate shipyards, 
where they might not interfere with each other. 

This shipbuilding at the Cove suggests that the shipping 
of cord wood or other merchandise to Boston had already 
begun, so that a bit of commerce independent of Hingham 
had sprung up. To this enterprise at the Cove we must 
add another already undertaken in the Beechwood region. 

It was the iron works upon Bound Brook at Turtle 
Island, 1703-4. This island is a few hundred yards south 
of Beechwood Street, made by the brook splitting into 
two streams and uniting again below. 

By building a dam on the west branch a good water 
power of a puny sort was obtained, and here the genius 
of Mordecai Lincoln contrived a trip hammer to forge 
out the iron which was smelted. 

The ore was bog iron, carted over from Pembroke, ten 
miles away, in the rudest sort of two-wheeled ox carts. 
The wheels were made of solid oak planks fastened to- 
gether and trimmed to a circular disk ; and they creaked 
upon wooden axles over the insufferably rough roads that 
led between the Pembroke ponds where the ore was found 
and the Turtle Island smelting furnace where the ore was 
reduced. 

The ore was miserable stuff, but iron was precious in 
those days. It is said that the only piece of iron which 
could be afforded in making a cart was the bolt that held 
on the yoke. 

To encourage the iron industry a subsidy had been 
offered by the Massachusetts government about fifty 
years before to any person that might undertake it. In 
Lynn, Braintree. and Bridgewater some success had 
already been achieved, and here were some enterprising 
Cohasseters working against great odds to get a little 
iron out of the miserable bog ore that they might haul 



1 88 HISTOR Y OF COHASSE T. 

from Pembroke. But Mordecai Lincoln was a blacksmith, 
and iron he must have. Furthermore, his familiarity with 
the moods of iron made him bold to woo it from its 
native ore. 

For smelting the ore charcoal was necessary, and that 
made an industry for some more men who went into our 
woods to make charcoal. The remains of some of these 
pits or ovens, where maple and birch and other woods 
were reduced to charcoal, can now be seen west of King 
Street, a few hundred feet in Robert T. Burbank's pas- 
ture. At many other places these little circular hollows 
may be found, containing bits of charcoal where piles of 
wood were slowly charred.* By the intense heat of this 
coal mixed into the lumps of bog ore a few drippings of 
melted iron would ooze out of the ore into the bottom of 
the furnace pit at Turtle Island. The molten mass was 
puddled and then hammered by the trip hammer into 
billets of wrought iron. Some of the slagf from the old 
furnace can be seen now at Turtle Island, also bits of the 
charcoal which have lain under the sod for nearly two 
hundred years. Some old hinges or andirons, or possibly 
nails, made of this iron are probably still doing service in 
some old Cohasset houses, especially the house built by 
Mordecai Lincoln on South Main Street. The original 
undertakers of this iron enterprise were Thomas An- 
drews, Daniel Lincoln, Thomas James, Aaron Pratt, Mor- 
decai Lincoln, Gershom Ewell, and Josiah Litchfield, Jr. 
The last three resided in Scituate, but the business 
belonged to Cohasset. 

A few years $ after the forge was started the Turtle 

* Not all of the charcoal pits which may be found in the town were used for 
the iron works. Indeed, the making of charcoal was no small industry for a 
whole century after the iron works were abandoned. Foot stoves and parlor 
heaters used charcoal, and after anthracite coal came into use, charcoal was still 
found necessary as a kindler for the hard coal. 

t Specimens are upon exhibit in the historical collection at our Town Hall. 

J January 3, 1717, Aaron Pratt made out a deed (unsigned) of his "part of the 
sawmill, partly in the First and partly in the Third Division of the Conehasset up- 
lands." 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. I 89 

Island sawmill was perched upon the east branch of the 
stream, a few rods from the forge, exactly on the line 
between the First Division and the Third Division. 

These two industries indicate that the Beechwood dis- 
trict had already begun to attract laborers, and that a 
community was forming here which was so far from the 
accommodations of Hingham as to add much to the Cohas- 
set claim for a meeting-house and schoolhouse. The agi- 
tation of this matter was kept up by every thought of the 
children grov/ing into maturity without half a chance at 
school, and by every Sunday that they trudged four or 
five miles to meeting, or else felt the rebuke for not 
going. Especially poignant was the reminder when they 
were compelled to pay every year from their scanty earn- 
ings, taxes a part of which went to support their unavail- 
able minister and school-teacher. 

They were willing to build a meeting-house for them- 
selves and get at least so much headway towards the privi- 
leges of a precinct. But here was another obstacle. How 
could the Cohasset settlers use the common land for a 
public building without the consent of all the grantees to 
whom the common lands belonged .'' Many of them lived 
away from Cohasset. Accordingly, some of the most 
energetic urged a meeting of all the proprietors in 
Hingham, to gain from them the privilege of erecting a 
meeting-house upon land that was common property. The 
meeting was held May 14, 1713, and the privilege was 
granted, "that the inhabitants of Conahasset shall have 
liberty to get up and erect a meeting-house there on that 
land called the plain." Just when they "got up" and 
" erected " it, is hard to tell, but probably not for a year 
or two. 

Their hope to have a minister paid out of the common 
taxes of the whole town was not getting much encourage- 
ment. The school-teacher they were even willing to be 
without, thinking that a minister might do some of that 



I go 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



work for them. But even one public servant was not 
apportioned to them. They still kept up the bombarding 
of the stubborn town government. They were determined 
either to have accessible preaching or to be released from 
further taxation to support preaching. Accordingly, about 
two years later (March 7, 17 14-15) they came again before 
the town meeting* and proposed three alternatives. 

First, they "desired the town that they would be pleased 
to give their consent that they might be made a precinct." 
If this were allowed, they would have the authority to tax 
themselves for ministerial and school purposes, and could 
select or direct as much of those functions as they might 
choose. By this arrangement they certainly could get 
some preaching in their own community, though it might 
not be for more than a part of each year. They were at 
least willing to be cut off from the privileges of Hingham 
in these things and to assume their own responsibilities. 

But if this desire failed, their second alternative was 
"that they might be allowed something out of the town 
treasury to help to maintain the worship of God amongst 
them." 

They were willing to pay double tax, that to support the 
Hingham church and some more to piece out what grant 
they might get from Hingham to support preaching here. 

Their third alternative was, " that they might be abated 
that which they pay to the minister to maintain the wor- 
ship of God at the town." 

The Hingham records confess that " the vote of the 
town passed in the negative concerning all the foremen- 
tioned particulars." 

Seventy-one years had passed by since the town of 
Hingham in her militia rebellion so stoutly claimed her 
independence ; but now when a subordinate community 

* The town warrant for this year held the following sympathetic article ; — 

" Also to consider the circumstances of their neighbors and brethren of Cona- 

hassett, whether they will allow them anything or how much towards the worship 

of God amongst iheni." 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



191 



begged of her an independence vastly more reasonable 
and just, she refused it. 

In their extremity the Cohasset unfortunates sent to 
Boston to present their case to the General Court of the 
province, praying for relief from a tyranny that levied 
taxation without ministration. 

But close upon their heels the citizens of Hingham sent 
a committee "to give answer to" the Cohasset presenta- 
tion at the session of June, 171 5. A committee from the 
General Court was appointed " to repair to Hingham and 
have a town meeting called for the purpose of securing 
satisfaction for the Cohasset petitioners." At this town 
meeting in July of that summer the town made a proposal 
not much more to their credit. 

It was voted that the inhabitants of Conahasset, that is to say 
the inhabitants of the First Division, and Second Division, and 
second part of the Third Division, of Conahasset upland to the 
fifty-fourth lot of the said second part of the Third Division, be 
freed from time to time from paying towards the support of a 
minister in Hingham during the time that they provide an ortho- 
dox minister among themselves, provided they cheerfully accept 
of the same. 

The record goes on to say that the " inhabitants of 
Conahasset replyed that they could not cheerfully accept 
thereof." It is clear that such an arrangement would 
entail a burden upon this struggling community for the 
support of a church three times as heavy as the Hingham 
settlers bore. 

So few in number were the people here and so poor in 
property that the continuous support of a minister was 
too great an undertaking. They might strain themselves 
to the task for a while, but so soon as they were com- 
pelled to give up, then the Hingham church tax would 
fall back upon them. If they were only a precinct they could 
support a minister for a while, and then be without one for 
a while, but always with the sweet privilege of autonomy. 



1 9 2 HIS TOK V OF COHA SSE T. 

Furthermore, their plea at the General Court was so 
hopeful that they expected to get the rights of a precinct 
in spite of the mother town. The reluctance of the town 
to allow the claim was partly for fear the distant settlers 
might evade the church tax of the town, and then do 
nothing towards maintaining the gospel in their own 
community. 

The town's concern in this deep matter was further 
shown in their stipulation that the minister must be an 
orthodox one. Such was the Hingham minister, John 
Norton, and such ministers were in the surrounding 
towns. But there were in New England at that time 
Baptists whom the old churches feared and Quakers 
whom they vigorously detested and drove out. Some of 
these latter had been in the town of Scituate, much to the 
alarm of some church folk. 

Other irregular religionists were floating about, and the 
stricter defenders of the faith were upon their guard. 
The recent use of the word "Orthodox" in contrast with 
Unitarian was not then known in Hingham, for the events 
here depicted were one hundred years earlier than the 
Unitarian movement. 

But there was evidently no need of apprehension as to 
the orthodoxy of Cohasseters, for they showed not the least 
signs of departure from the standards of their time, as 
we soon shall see. 

Two months after Hingham's offer to remit the minis- 
terial taxes another compromise was offered, this time 
remitting also the school taxes, if only the complainers 
would maintain their own minister. 

But the momentum towards the autonomy of a precinct 
was getting stronger with the increase of inhabitants and 
with the coming to age of boys born in Cohasset. 

In the next March, 1716, the town "voted to allow 
seventeen pounds nineteen shillings and sixpence out of 
the town treasury towards the maintaining of the worship 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 1 93 

of God," it being the Cohasset share of church and school 
taxes for the town in the year 171 5. 

The money was ordered paid to John Jacob ; but there 
is no record that John Jacob ever took it — they were on 
the track of larger game. Again the Cohasseters went 
before the General Court, November 8, 17 16, with a peti- 
tion of twenty-one names, headed by Daniel Lincoln, and 
again Hingham appointed a committee to checkmate 
them.* Then the Cohasset men at the town meeting on 
the following February 1 1 renewed their proposal to the 
town to be set off as a precinct ; but the monotonous 
negative was their only reply. 

Relief, however, was at hand. That summer of 171 7 
a committee of the General Court was chosen to view 
the " lands and dwellings of the inhabitants of Conohas- 
set, to see if it be convenient to make them a precinct ; " 
"the petitioners to bear the expense." True to their 
principles to the very last, the town appointed a committee 
to intercept this committee from the General Court, and 
to obstruct the Cohasset movement. But the long strug- 
gle could not be robbed of its victory. 

On the twenty-first day of the next November, the year 
1717,1 the General Court granted the inhabitants of 
Cohasset, alias Little Hingham, a precinct, by setting 
them off from the rest of the town in the matter of 
church and school. 

But now came the sober responsibility of maintaining 
the precinct for which they had so nobly striven. They 
asked the General Court for directions how to call their 
first meeting legally. Perhaps this request was made 
necessary by the Hingham officials refusing to give legal 
warning for such a meeting. At any rate, the court gave 

* The General Court ordered the Cohasset petition to be shown to Hingham, 
so that any objections might be heard on Tuesday, the twentieth of that month. 

t Rev. Jacob FHnt's Century Address errs in putting this event at the date 1715 ; 
also in several other particulars his account of the struggle for autonomy is in- 
accurate. 



194 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



directions, and the first meeting of the precinct was duly 
called. It convened on the fourteenth day of the next 
July. 

Daniel Lincoln was chosen the first moderator, and 
Thomas James, clerk. 

John Orcutt, Joshua Bates, and Joseph Bates were 
chosen " to warn meetings for the future." 

The place of meeting was doubtless the building upon 
the plain, for which a permit from the proprietors had been 
obtained five years before. They had placed it a few rods 
southeast of the present church on the Common, framing 
it about thirty-five feet long by twenty-five wide.* 

Tradition says that some of the timbers f of it were 
cut from trees standing on the plain. Labor and material 
for the building had to be given by public-spirited set- 
tlers, for the town of Hingham had no part in it. 

The furniture consisted of a pulpit high up on one 
side, — high enough for a closet underneath, — deacons' 
seats or benches directly in front of the pulpit, and other 
benches, probably without backs, ranging across the bare 
floor. 

Galleries were put in on three sides, with their floors 
sloping towards the middle of the room. Windows with 
small panes of glass let in some light under the galleries. 

Several years after the beginning (August, 1723) some 
pews with high board partitions were built upon the main 
floor; but the utmost simplicity ruled everywhere at first. 

A month after the first meeting they held another, at 
which they voted to raise seventy-five pounds for the sup- 
port of ministry, and John Orcutt, John Farrar, and Heze- 
kiah Lincoln were to provide a preacher for three months. 
At the end of that three months others were appointed 
to be responsible for the services of a preacher, and so 

*See Rev. Jacob Flint's Century Discourses. 

tSome of them are said to be built into the house on the east side of the Com- 
mon, which is now the home of Zenas D. Lincoln. 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 1 95 

on until April, 17 19, when they voted to have a fast all 
day, the third Thursday of the month, in solemn prepara- 
tion for the responsible act of calling their first minister 
to settle among them. They voted to give him, according 
to the ancient custom, a bonus, which should be one hun- 
dred pounds, for settling among them, besides an annual 
salary of one hundred and ten pounds. 

But they postponed the choice of their minister until 
June of that year, when eleven votes were cast for a Mr. 
Pierpont and one for Mr. Spear. Mr. Pierpont, however, 
did not accept his call. 

The young men who were being educated for the minis- 
try were to be found in those days at Cambridge. Har- 
vard College had been for nearly one hundred years true 
to the purpose of its founders — that of furnishing an 
educated ministry. 

From this college, on many Saturday mornings, some 
one of these young preachers might be seen starting upon 
horseback towards the little precinct Cohasset. Other 
preachers who happened to be pulpit free were sometimes 
employed ; but that orthodox college at Cambridge was 
the main source of supply. 

The fee which was paid for these pulpit services was 
" thirty shillings per day for the minister that should come 
from Cambridge, if he could not be had under."* 

The person who boarded the minister and kept his 
horse was paid from the treasury. Now this treasury was 
remarkably full for so poor a community. There was no 
evidence that the people shirked their religious responsi- 
bility, as the mother town had feared they might do. 

Before they became a precinct their total ministerial 
and school taxes were only ninety dollars ; but now they 
poured into their church treasury each year four hundred 
dollars or more. 

Such a tax levied upon their property by their own 

* Vote of May 30, 1720. 



196 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



precinct assessors was the price of their independence 
and of their convenience in worship. 

It is not a surprise, therefore, to note that the Beal 
families who lived near Turkey Hill, no farther from the 
Hingham meeting-house than from the Cohasset one, 
should be a little uneasy under the heavy parish burden. 

Daniel Lincoln and John Jacob and Ibrook Tower and 
Aaron Pratt had greater reason to be proud of their pre- 
cinct than the Beals, who lived just within the edge of 
the precinct. Some of these latter* were set back into 
the Hingham government at a subsequent time, but the 
Cohasset precinct was a success from the start. 

The second minister to be called to the pastorate of 
their church was Samuel Spear, who had formerly received 
one vote; but now, December 2, 1720, they gave him 
thirteen votes. A committee was appointed to draft an 
instrument concerning their principles of religion, and 
to present it to the minister chosen for his compliance. 
But Mr. Spear did not become their minister. It was 
reserved to Nehemiah Hobart, a grandson of the Rev. 
Peter Hobart, the first minister of Hingham, to be the 
first minister settled at Cohasset. 



* The following petition was made to the Council at Boston, Friday, November 
27, 1719, but it was dismissed : — 

" A Petition of John Beal, Lazarus Beal, Purdy McFarlow and Lazarus Beal 
jr. Inhabitants of the town of Hingham, Setting forth that the Petitioners with their 
Families were lately set off from the old Meeting house in Hingham to the new 
Precinct at Cohasset, That if they are obliged thereby to attend the public worship 
of God at Cohasset, and pay towards the support of it there, it will be such a bur- 
den & hardship upon them that they cannot be able to comply therewith, by 
reason of the Length and Badness of the Way to the said Precinct Meeting 
House, which was the greatest Motive as urged by the Persons petitioning for the 
said Precinct to this Honorable Court in setting off Cohasset as aforesaid. 

"Some of the Petitioners are two miles and a half and others three miles distant 
from the (new) Precinct Meeting House and the Way is vacant of Inhabitants which 
makes it very inconvenient to travel, especially in the winter season. Therefore 
most humbly praying this Honorable Court would please so to continue them to 
the old Meeting House at Hingham as formerly or otherwise that they may pay no 
greater tax to the ministry at the new Precinct than their proportion would be at 
the old." 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



197 



He had preached regularly at Cohasset from July, 1721, 
but not until Monday, December 13, was he ordained. 

It was an occasion of no small concern for the town. 
They had voted ten pounds ($50) for an ordination dinner, 
and had invited the two churches of Scituate, besides 
that of Hingham and that of Hull. 

The ordinary household and farm drudgeries were 
spurned that day, and the parish gathered at the little 
old meeting-house on the plain for the impressive reli- 



■HbjHb^^SL < ■ ^-v 




L ':i 




F 


.' .J 



Photo, Harriet A. Nickerson. 
When WINTER'S SNOWY PINIONS SHAKK THE WHITE DOWN IN THE AIR." 



gious service, with all its festival and social accompani- 
ments. They made a solemn compact that day which is 
worthy of deep regard for its clearness and thorough con- 
secration. It was read and signed as follows : — 

We do, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the presence 
of God, and the holy angels, explicitly and expressly covenant 
and bind ourselves in manner and form following, viz. : We do 
give up ourselves to God, whose name alone is Jehovah, Father, 



I 98 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

Son and Holy Ghost. To God the Father, as our chief and only 
good ; and unto our Lord Jesus Christ as our Prophet, Priest and 
King, and only mediator of the covenant of grace ; and unto 
the Spirit of God as our only sanctifier and comforter. And we 
do give up ourselves one unto another in the Lord, covenanting 
and promising to walk together as a Church of Christ, in all ways 
of his own institution, according to the prescriptions of his holy 
word, promising that with all tenderness and brotherly love, we 
will with ail faithfulness watch over each other's souls, and that 
we will freely yield up ourselves to the discipline and power of 
Christ in his church, and attend whatever ordinances Christ hath 
appointed and declared in his word ; and wherein we fail, and 
come short of duty, to wait upon him for pardon and remission, 
beseeching him to make our spirits steadfast in his covenant, and 
to own us as his church and covenant people forever. Amen. 

(Pastor) NEHEMIAH HOBART. 
JOHN ORCUTT. 
STEPHEN STODDARD. 
THOMAS JAMES. 
JOHN JACOB. 
EBENEZER KENT. 
JOSEPH BATES. 
ELIJAH VINAL Jr.* 

Thus were they bound together in a fellowship so 
sacred that the Hingham church had no need to fear for 
their orthodoxy. 

But how about the school privileges .-' They must have 
their children taught, and the Hingham people were will- 
ing to refund a part of the Cohasset school tax, since the 
rights of the precinct compelled it. 

As early as the spring of 1721 the precinct voted to 
receive the school money "from the town of Hingham, 
and to dispose of it as foUoweth : one third part of it to 
be paid to a school dame for teaching the children to 
read, and two thirds of the money to be disposed of to 

*This man was from North Scituate, as probably were several of the worship- 
ers in these first days. 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



199 



teach the children to write and to cipher." Just how 
much money could thus be used is not stated, but it was 
not more than twenty pounds.* However, the "school 
dames " were not expensive teachers. They were women 
of natural aptitude for teaching, who eked out their living 
by gathering the children of their neighborhood into a 
kitchen or an attic, or some other convenient room, and 
there teaching the little ones some simple ways of using 
words and numbers. No certificate was needed, and few 
were the women who could impart even that rudimentary 
instruction. The letters of our alphabet were frequently 
taught to the little ones at home by proud mothers or 
fond brothers and sisters, to show off the parrot precocity 
of their babies. 

The reading taught by school dames was from a small 
primer that gave first the letters, then short words, then 
short sentences, then rhymes ; but the sentiments were 
the loftiest moral and religious ones, frequently at a hope- 
less distance beyond the reach of the child mind. 

Two thirds of that first-mentioned money were devoted 
to the arts " writing and ciphering." Little slabs of slate 
with pencils of a softer slate were the implements of this 
culture. 

The sharp rasping of pencil points upon their stone 
tablets was a daily torture to nervous teachers, while the 
children laboriously shaped our written words or juggled 
with numbers in their baby arithmetic. But a more 
advanced method of education was necessary to supple- 
ment the "dame schools." 

In Hingham there was yearly employed a man to teach 
a so-called "grammar school"; and Cohasset, having to 
pay towards his support, desired to get a part of his 
instruction. 

Eight years after the precinct began its corporate life 

* March 13, 1721-22, Hingham voted " that Cohasset shall have the proportion 
they pay of the £j,o lax allowed them out of the town treasury to their treasurer." 



200 HIS TOR V OF COHASSE T. 

the school question began to be a serious one. For some 
reason Hingham ceased to refund the Cohasset school 
tax ; perhaps it was because Cohasset had nothing better 
than "dame schools" and it seemed wrong to excuse the 
Cohasseters from their share of support in the town's 
grammar school. 

Finally, June 23, 1725, "Daniel Lincoln and Stephen 
Stoddard presented a request on behalf of the inhabitants 
of Cohasset that the town would allow them their propor- 
tion of what they pay to a school for the year ensuing." 
But the request was denied. 

The next year (May 9, 1726) another committee — John 
Jacob, Stephen Stoddard, and Prince Joy — requested, on 
behalf of the Cohasseters, " that the school may be kept 
in their place for the year ensuing, their proportion of 
the time in the same." But this apparently reasonable 
request was refused. 

Another year passed during which the Cohasseters 
might ponder and nurse their indignation. 

Then (May 8, 1727) another committee — "John 
Jacob, Joseph Bates and Prince Joy, agents for the East 
Precinct in Hingham" — presented "a petition praying 
that the town would allow them the school one third part 
of the year, or the proportion of money they pay to the 
school." Again the familiar negative vote prevailed. 

But a higher authority, the same General Court at 
Boston which had granted them relief from municipal 
stubbornness ten years before in the church matter, might 
now be invoked. 

Two months after their last refusal the precinct voted 
to call a meeting " to know the precinct mind concerning 
petitioning the Great and General Court concerning the 
school." 

At that 'meeting (August 14, 1727) John Jacob, who 
was then a member of the House of Representatives from 
the town and one of the wealthiest men in all Hingham, 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



201 



was appointed agent to present the Cohasset plea to the 
General Court. 

The following record of that court two months later 
shows how promptly the agent did his work : — 

Oct. 12, 1727 — a petition of the Inhabitants of Cohasset 
setting forth their great difficulty by reason of their remoteness 
from the Grammar School in the town of Hingham (of which 
they are a precinct) and that they can receive no benefit by the 
said school in the education of their children although they are 




Photo Harriet A. Nickerson. 

Mouth of Littlk Harbor in Winter. 



taxed toward the support of it. And therefore praying that they 
may have the benefit of the said school to be kept within their 
precinct one third of the year, or that they may be exempted 
from paying to the support of that school and allowed to provide 
a schoolmaster to instruct their children in writing and reading. 

Hingham was served by the court with a copy of this 
petition to overrule the town's vote, and was notified to 
show cause why it should not be granted. When the 
answer came two months later, the petition was referred 



202 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

to the next session of court, " that the town of Hingham 
may have an opportunity to accommodate the matter 
among themselves." 

No further compulsion seems to have been necessary ; 
for on the following May 6, 1728, the town voted to allow 
Cohasset to draw out of the treasury their proportion of 
the ^80 ($400) which was appropriated for schools, "pro- 
vided they employ the same for and towards the support 
of a school among themselves, and for no other use." 

The Cohasset people very gladly "employed" that 
money " for no other use," and that very winter following 
their school was kept somewhere in the precinct, upon 
their fair proportion of school taxes.* 

Their hopes and their long struggle for school rights 
had now come to a finish. For many subsequent years 
they received their proportion of the town's school tax 
and hired their own " master." They had no public 
schoolhouse as they had meeting-house, so that the teach 
ing had to be done each winter in such buildings as the 
successive school committees might choose. However, 
the autonomy of a precinct was essentially complete. 
They controlled their own parish and school affairs with- 
out any outside authority. They levied their own taxes 
for church expenses, and at least appropriated their own 
taxes for school purposes. 

Since these were the two most important public func- 
tions for them, they were the first to be acquired. The 
next function to be gained in self-government was the 
choice of their own representative in the general govern- 
ment of the province, and the natural accompaniment of 
that — town rights. 

In a subsequent chapter their valiant political battle to 
wrench themselves from the grasp of the mother town, 
to become a town of themselves, will be followed. 

*The first school committee chosen to do this business were John Jacob, 
Joshua Bates, and ]ohn Orcutt. 



THE AUTONOMY OF A PRECINCT. 



203 



The men who settled New England were men whose 
grip was hard to loosen. They were determined to 
govern themselves, and that made it difficult for any 
minority to break away. But the determination of these 
men of our rock-ribbed town was dauntless. Their indus- 
try within a few generations of their settlement had given 
them a wealth far beyond their proportion of numbers in 
the town, and their progress was linked with an inevitable 
destiny. 

The following words from George P. Fisher's book, The Colonial Era, p. 169, 
are appropriate to this chapter : — 

" The intellectual activity of the New England people was a prime characteristic. 
Most of them were English yeomen. With them came over substantial country 
gentlemen and some merchants of large means. 

" But it was true of all, that their minds had been deeply stirred by the theological 
controversies of the age. If it was true of tlie bulk of them that they read few 
books, the Bible, in the whole range of its literature, was an ever-present stimulating 
companion. Morning and night and on the Lord's Day they hung over its pages 
with eager and absorbed, as well as reverent attention. 

" Whatever has to do with man as a spiritual being had in their eyes a transcendent 
importance. Hence a marked distinction of the principal New England com- 
munities is the interest that was felt from the beginning in the education of the 
people, and the heavy burdens that were cheerfully assumed to effect the object. 

" Schools were soon set up in all considerable towns, save in Plymouth Colony, 
where the poverty of the people explains the exception. 

" In 1647 the law of Massachusetts required that a school should be supported in 
every town having fifty householders, and that a grammar school should be es- 
tablished, where boys could be fitted for college, in every place where the house- 
holders numbered a hundred." 



CHAPTER XI. 



" AN HIGHWAY SHALL BE THERE, AND A WAY. 

DURING the period which preceded and followed the 
gaining of precinct rights, much attention was 
given to the highways. Public thoroughfares are the 
arteries and veins for the circulation of any comnninity, 
and not a little of a town's prosperity depends upon its 
roads. 

It was the misfortune of early Cohasset settlers to have 
the most wretched roads imaginable for a place neither 
mountainous nor swampy. Indeed, however, both hills 

and swamps of puny di- 
mensions were here, and 
compelled almost any 
highway through the town 
to twist itself into innu- 
merable kinks. Besides 
this, the ledges of gran- 
ite with unscrupulous ef- 
frontery crowded men into narrow places ; the countless 
bowlders too large to be dug out stubbornly jogged either 
one wheel or the other ; and the clay hills, moreover, 
which the glacier packed so hard, held the rain in pockets 
where sticky mud would form every spring and fall, to mire 
the oxen and carts. Every foot of our present smooth 
roads represents a vast expenditure of labor to overcome 
our naturally bad road conditions. 

In a previous chapter we noted that the Fisher plan 
reserved certain straight strips for future highways, and 
a broad fringe along the water's edge or between the 
marshes and uplands for public ways. But there is a 
great difference between highways laid out on a map 




The PioNhEKs Chariot. 



"AN HIGHWA V SHALL BE THERE, AND A WA K." 205 

and real highways cut through forests or dug through 
hills. 

Two of Fisher's highways are now lying in the forest 
west of King Street which no cart has ever traveled; 
and only an expert can point out the stone wall which 
marks them. Fisher did not attempt to travel all the 
strips of land which he located for roads, as we shall see 
when we speak of Beechwood Street. 

Originally there were, no doubt, several paths and 
Indian trails traversing the town which now may be 
guessed at. One probably came from Hingham Harbor 
to Turkey Hill, which hill was a sort of look-off; it 
then passed on to Lily Pond, touching probably on the 
north side where the sunny slope meets the water ; thence 
it might have found its way to the mouth of Bound 
Brook. It will be remembered that in the chapter upon 
"A Bone of Contention" the Massachusetts court spoke 
of a bridge being upon Bound Brook as early as the year 
1639. This was probably a mere log or logs felled across 
the brook and resting perhaps upon Bound Rock, which 
divides the stream and makes a middle pier. This old 
footpath was traveled by the pioneers in visiting back 
and forth between Hingham and Scituate, and was called 
the King's Highway, a name which still clings to that 
part in North Scituate running from the mill upon the 
east side of Bound Brook to the railroad station. The 
Hingham records, many years later, explaining why they 
called our Lily Pond, Scituate Pond, said " because it 
lyeth on the way leading to Scituate, and for no other 
reason." 

This path through Cohasset was never perpetuated as 
a cart road, and is now almost wholly obliterated.* There 
was another pathway leading around the shore by way of 

* There is still remembered an old way or trail leading from the neighborhood 
of Agricultural Hall to King Street near the pond. An old deed (1755) of an 
acre of Hezekiah Tower's homestead sold to John Burbank for £2 mentions 
this " Way." 



2o6 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Straits Pond, of which Jerusalem Road is the famous 
descendant. 

A third path which was most of all influential in de- 
termining our roads is what we have called the old cattle 
trail leading from Turkey Meadow to Little Harbor. 
Fisher's plan might well have regarded this natural course ; 
but he wholly ignored it, providing no way whatever for 
straight travel to and from Hingham. 

Cart travel to Hingham was not indeed the first 
demand for highways, because boats were the exclusive 
means of transporting hay to Hingham for the first thirty 
or forty years. The first cartways were those leading 
along the edge of the marshes next to the upland and 
connecting with the various loading places. We have 
already spoken of these loading places and of the corduroy 
bridge, ordered built by John Jacob, the father of the Co- 
hasset John Jacob, as early as 1672, across the narrow strip 
of meadow where Spring Street now crosses the railway. 




Panorama of Ei.m Street, looking 



"AN HIGHWA Y SHALL BE THERE, AND A IVA YT lOJ 

That crossing is one of the oldest bits of highway 
in the town still used for travel. Another short stretch 
of ancient highway is where Summer Street passes in 
front of M. B. Stetson's store on to the Cove where 
an ancient loading place was ; also Snow Place, leading 
into the Bryant estate, formerly ended at a public loading 
place. 

There was a loading place on the north side of the 
head of the Cove, perhaps near the Higgins boat shop, 
and another somewhere on the south side ; but the creek 
ran between, and there is no mention of a bridge across it 
until the year 1762, January 28, when "the Question was 
put wheather the Town will Procure and lay out a Way 
Over y^ Creek at y^ Head of Ship Cove in y^ Second 
Parrish. Passed in the affirmative." What is now Elm 
Street was probably a cartway along the edge of the 
marsh leading to the north side of the Cove. 

All of these old ways have been changed so that only 




Photns, Mrs. E. K. Elli 



SOUTHEASr FROM ELLIOT STODDARD'S. 



2 o8 HIS TOR y OF CON A SSE T. 

pieces here and there conform to the original location. 
Indeed, there is only one street in the whole town which 
wholly conforms to the original lay-out on the Fisher plan ; 
that is Sohier * Street, formerly Winter Street, and still 
earlier called Deer Hill Lane. 

How the highway along our shore which we call South 
Main Street was partially straightened we recounted in a 
former chapter. The end near Bound Brook ran down to 
a broad shallow fording place below the present mill 
bridge, where it passed over to the King's Highway in 
Scituate. 

Coming towards Cohasset the road skirted around by 
the marsh fences ; but when the way was ordered to be 
laid straight through the lots to Jacob's Meadow to the 
point where the South Main Street fountain now is, a 
troublesome curve was forever cut off. But at this point 
a rough detour around the head of Jacob's Meadow to the 
old corduroy bridge at Cold Spring had to be traveled 
for more than a century and a half, until it was straight- 
ened in the year 1838 (June), by a way built across the 
meadow, where now stands the Catholic Church. 

At the place where Main Street crosses James Brook 
there must have been a ford or a bridge, or both, but 
nothing can be found in the records referring to the 
matter. The old location of Main Street in 1682 fol- 
lowed the present course along through the Common until 
it reached Daniel Lincoln's corner, as we saw in the 
chapter on "The First Homes." 

One reason for turning towards Hingham at this par- 
ticular place was the interference of a line of kettle holes 
left by the glacier in the gravel. These hollows, strung 
along west of the cemetery for several hundred yards, 
have already been referred to, and one can easily see how 
the road had to be curved around the margin of these 
hollow places in order to be kept level. 

* Named for William D. Sohier. 



"AN HIGHWAY SHALL BE THERE, AND A WAV." 2O9 

The ends of the lots along this main highway from 
Scituate became confused in fifteen or more years, so that 
" new marks for the northeast ends of lots in the First 
Division " were ordered in the year 1699. The lots butting 
on the west side of Main Street are far from a straight 
alignment even to-day, and they bear witness either to 
careless surveys or greedy encroachments upon the com- 
mon land. 

At that same date, 1699, "the south ends of the lots 
on Great Neck " were ordered to be re-marked. These 
ends are bounded by Elm Street and Highland Avenue 
upon the south border of Great Neck, and they are now 
fairly straight, especially that part of Highland Avenue 
lying along the side of the Common, which was made 
straight by a town order, through the efforts of Samuel 
Hall, in the year 1864. 

Originally all the private premises between Highland 
Avenue and Main Street were common land reserved by 
the Fisher plan. 

A few years before these new marks were ordered " the 
selectmen of Hingham appointed Samuel Jacob to lay out 
a highway for Israel Nichols near his now dwelling house 
at Cohassett," March 25, 1695. This way was along the 
border of Straits Pond, and is now a part of Jerusalem 
Road. It was to facilitate Israel Nichols' travel to Hing- 
ham, and it needed only to reach as far as the Straits Pond 
mill, for there was already a horse track there at the mill 
and a bridge that horseback riders could cross in going 
from Hull to Hingham.* Twenty-three years after this 
date there was an order for relocating two important high- 
ways : one was Jerusalem Road and the other Beechwood 
Street. 

It will be remembered that Beechwood settlers began to 
gather there in the first years of seventeen hundred, when 

* Hingham Records of June 9, 1696. The town refused to make this horse 
bridge into a cart bridge. 



2 I O HIS TOR Y OF CO HA SSE T. 

the iron smelter and forge were established on Turtle 
Island. A cart track of some sort connected them with 
the other settlers at Cohasset plain, but it was not in the 
highway located on Fisher's plan. That highway was im- 
passable by any vehicle broader than a wheelbarrow, for 
there were ledges in it that filled up the whole width of 
three rods. 

In May, 171 7, the town attempted to make the matter 
right by getting the surveyor, Captain John Norton, to mark 
out a way, accompanied by the selectmen.* The old way 
lying between lots seventeen and eighteen was marked by 
little heaps of stones on each side for the whole distance 
"except that part in Captain Hawke's pasture," where it 
was necessary to depart from the original location. 

But the men who would have to travel that road de- 
murred and demanded a more easy access to their homes. 

Another committee was appointed to view the situation, 
and they advised the exchange of the whole highway for 
some other strip of land more convenient. 

Accordingly, two years later, 17 19, a committee, this 
time men of Cohasset, was appointed to view the way 
and to locate a better one. This they did in land of 
Joshua and James Hersey, lying north of the old way. 

Their settlement of the affair was not wholly satisfac- 
tory, for John Lewis complained that he would be com- 
pelled to build too much new fencing- where the highway 
touched his land. 

For three or four years longer the matter was in sus- 
pense, and the Beechwood settlers got into their premises 
across men's lots by some old wood roads while they 
waited for the town to cut through a practicable public 
way. 

There is now to be seen at the south edge of Jacob's 
Meadow, below Sunset Rock, leading out of Spring Street 
east of the railway crossing, the remnant of an old cart- 

*They paid Captain John Norton eight shillings for this work. 



''AN HIGH W A y SHALL BE THERE, AND A WA F." 2 I I 

way which used to be traveled towards Beechwood. The 
hollow track made by the carts of old times may still be 
followed for several hundred yards. Whether this old cart- 
way was traveled in lieu of a public way, or whether Joshua 
Hersey's land was used substantially as the road now runs, 
is uncertain. It is plain that any road across lots could 
not be used after the lots were fenced for pastures, with- 
out trouble to the owners. Therefore Joshua Hersey in 
the year 1724 requested the town meeting at Hinghara to 
appoint another committee to do again the work of the 
previous committee. 

It was done. The committee laid out the new way 
along the north side of Joshua Hersey's lot next to Sam- 
uel Orcutt's lot* where Beechwood Street now lies. It is 
the only place where a straight way into the Third Divi- 
sion could be made without severe hill climbing. 

The width was to be three rods running nearly straight 
for six sevenths of- the way ; then it was to bend south- 
ward at a point fifty-two and a half rods from the division 
line, and run to the south side of Joshua Hersey's lot, 
keeping a width of only two and a half rods. For thirty 
rods it skirted the south side of Hersey's lot with a 
breadth of three rods, then for eleven rods more it ran 
diagonally across James Hersey's and Joshua Bates' land 
,to the division line near Turtle Island. Joshua Hersey 
was to receive the old highway lying between lots seven- 
teen and eighteen in exchange for the new highway 
through his own lot.f This highway was not accepted by 
the town until eight years later, 1732 ; but it was probably 
used long before it was formally accepted. At about the 
same time with the trouble of locating this end of Beech- 
wood Street, the other end was being fixed. No land for 
a highway through the Beechwood lots had been reserved 
by the Fisher plan, but it will be remembered that the lots 

* Samuel Orcutt's lot seems to have been number twenty-one. 
t Joshua Hersey owned lot twenty, as nearly as I can ascertain. 



2 I 2 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

were granted upon condition that the proprietors should 
all have the right of way through each other's lots. As 
soon as they began to settle that region, twenty or thirty 
years after the division of 167 1, they opened a way, as 
straight as the rough lands permitted, leading to South 
Main Street. The part of this Beech wood Street, or Wood 
Street as it was frequently called, which lay across the 
Beechwood lots soon had to be kept open permanently, 
for the bars that kept the cattle and sheep enclosed could 
not be tolerated by busy men. 

Accordingly, a legal covenant was signed April 21, 
1726, by the following owners, keeping open for their 
mutual benefit a way forty-four feet wide and about a mile 
and a half long, reaching from lot sixty-three to lot 
eight : — 

Joshua Bates. (Unknown.) Nathaniel Marble. 

Joshua Bates, Jr. Jonathan Pratt. Caleb Joy. 

Thomas Church. Steven Stoddard. John Wilcutt. 

Sarah Church. Aaron Pratt, Jr. Amos Joy. 

Philip Wilcutt. Ebenezer Kent. Abner Joy. 

Samuel Orcutt. David Marble. 

About forty years afterwards a persistent effort was 
made by some owners to persuade the town to grant them 
a part of the unused highway at the west end of their 
lots near Lily Pond in exchange for this mutually cove- 
nanted way cut through their lots. There was no little 
trouble over the matter; but finally (1762) the town 
accepted the highway without any mention of the unused 
way as a lieu land. 

While this main thoroughfare was being located and 
improved to the accommodation of the Beechwood part 
of Cohasset, another way was having its destiny deter- 
mined near Straits Pond. 

Israel Nichols and his descendants were settling the 
Jerusalem Road region. 

The old path along the shore leading to Beach Islands 



"AN HIGHWAY SHALL BE THERE, AND A IFA V." 213 

was traveled by men and by cattle long before carts could 
travel it. 

Nevertheless, Fisher's plan had reserved a broad strip 
bordering the ocean for a future highway. But that strip 
had grass on it in many places good for pasture, and some 
of it got enclosed by private fencing. 

Accordingly, a committee was appointed in 171 7- 18 
" to view the way that leads from Straits Pond, which runs 
by Israel Nichols to the Beach Islands, and see that there 
be no encroachment upon it, and report what quantity 
there is in said highway, and what the worth of it may be 
to sell and what it may be worth a year to let." 

It is enough to make one catch his breath to think how 
narrowly that highway escaped being sold, in which case 
the famous Jerusalem Road would never have existed 
with its beauty and profit to the town. The committee 
reported the quantity of it to be about thirty acres, worth 
one hundred and fifty pounds ; but if rented, worth about 
six pounds a year. The town voted to let it out for a 
pasture for five years. Seven years after this, in 1725, 
a committee was appointed "to lay out a way near Jaza- 
niah Nichols for the town's use." This Jazaniah Nichols 
lived near the marsh corner {Walnut Angle), the point 
where Atlantic Avenue now connects with Jerusalem 
Road. The committee in laying out the road three rods 
wide had to occupy a part of Peck's Meadow, and paid for 
it at the rate of thirty pounds per acre. Not more than 
a dozen families lived at that time the full length of 
Jerusalem Road, and their cartway towards Hingham 
or towards Cohasset was a wretched one at best. 

The changes which have been necessary from the first 
until the present smooth, highway would be tedious to 
relate. At the Steep Rocks near Little Harbor there 
always was a difficulty, for private land had to be crossed 
from Bow Street over to the Ridges. At the year 1737 
the difficulty was seriously undertaken ; but it is now 



2 1 4 HISTOR Y OF COHASSE T. 

permanently solved by blasting out the face of the rocks 
for a narrow way. 

The next road to be spoken of is King Street, which 
had been given that important name because it was 
intended by the surveyor to be a main street. It was 
made six rods wide, while Main Street was only four rods 
wide. Before the street was ever cut through it became 
apparent that a large part would never be needed. All 
that part from the present almshouse to Breadencheese 
Tree Plain — a mile long — was never used, but was given 
to private owners in exchange for roads that could be used. 

The settlers upon King Street at about the year 1730 
included Hezekiah Tower, his son-in-law John Burbank,* 
and his nephew Thomas James, also " King David " 
Bates and John Beal, with probably two or three others. 

These all had access to their farms from the Hingham 
highway as King Street now runs, besides having a 
straight and steep road to the Cohasset plain, down Deer 
Hill Lane, now Sohier Street. 

There was no highway connecting the King Street 
settlers with Beechwood, neither was there any cartway 
from Beechwood to Hingham, It was necessary for some 
of the Beechwood people to travel nearly nine miles 
through Cohasset to Hingham stores, when they were 
only four miles distant. 

Such a ride to Hingham was no luxury in those days. 
There was not a four-wheeled vehicle in the town. Their 
heavy two-wheeled ox carts, without pretense of springs, 
bumped over stones and slumped into holes along the 
insufferably rough roads for three hours, until one's bones 
cried out for a restful walk. Nowadays luxurious car- 
riages bowl along the short cut of Doane Street in about 
forty minutes, and even the jar of a pebble "on the smooth 
road is quenched by the soft rubber tires. 

* John Burbank appears to have come from Rowley, Mass. He married Eliz- 
abeth Tower, daughter of Hezekiah, June 28, 1728. 



"AiV HIGH W A V SHALL BE THERE, AND A WA F." 2 I5 

But the roughness of those early roads was removed, 
bump at a time, through successive generations. 

The bridge work and corduroy over wet places that was 
continually necessary may be faintly suggested by the 
following item in the year 1726 from the treasurer's book : 
" Paid Stephen Stoddard surveyor for forty cords of wood 
at one shilling, sixpence per cord, and pine plank three 
shillings, sixpence, all of which was used in the Highway 
through the First Division of Cohassett — total three 



riioto, Harriet .\. Nickcrsoii. 

The nkw State Road in Gkeai" Swamp. 

pounds, three shillings & sixpence." Also, " Paid Laz- 
arus Beal surveyor for nine and a half cords of wood 
used in mending highways at Cohassett at sixteen pence 
per cord and for timber four shillings — total eighteen 
shillings sixpence." Instead of having a superintendent 
of streets, surveyors were appointed to keep up the roads 
in their own neighborhoods. Men worked out taxes every 
year, improving the highways under the direction of these 
surveyors. 



2 1 6 HIS TOR V OF COHASSE T. 

There is a marked peculiarity in the highways of our 
town which fails to impress the native inhabitants as it 
does newcomers, — that is the uneven boundaries at the 
side of nearly all highways. It is rare that two adjacent 
lots front upon the same straight line. It was partly 
caused by the uneven contour of the Fisher plan, but 
more by the encroachments of private owners upon the 
highways. After much grumbling throughout the whole 
town, a committee was appointed to look into the matter 
of encroachments, and the part of their report referring to 
Cohasset is as follows : — 

The committee to whome was Reffered the Considerations of 
the Incroachments Repoart as followeth May the loth 1762. 
The Committee Appointed by the town to Enquire into the 
Incroachments made on the Highways Preceded on the Affair 
and after the most Careful View find the following Pieces of 
Land included by the Persons hereafter Named within their Out 
Side Fence (Exclusive of all Yards & Gardains fenced by them 
Selves) Vizt. James Hall a piece by his House, by Samuel Bates 
South of his House & West of the Road, by Thomas Nichols a 
piece Included within his Meadow Fence near Peck's Meadow, 
by Capt. Beal's a piece included within his meadow fence at 
Beach Island — &c. &c. 

The roads were formerly used as pastures, and cows 
with tinkling bells or horses or pigs or geese were not 
uncommon sights upon the public way. 

The same spirit of public ownership would lead to 
fencing in a little of the unused land for a garden, as 
nowadays front lawns sometimes are pressed far out to 
the edge of the wheel tracks. The decay of boundary 
marks left people with only their slippery memories for 
authority in the matter. At times there would arise 
reformers to urge the town rights, and charges would be 
made upon various citizens for encroachments, and the 
town would give deeds to bits of the highway. 

One marked instance is in the center of the town be- 



"AN HIGH IV A y SHALL BE THERE, AND A WA K" 2 I 7 

tween Highland Avenue and Elm Street upon which the 
Grand Army Hall stands. This bold ledge and all the 
soil that fringes it were formerly a part of the Common 
reaching around to where the harness shop now is. This 
locality was squatted upon by various persons, and after- 
wards, in 1805, the town voted to sell it as follows : — 

William Stetson, 12^ rods ?i50.oo 

Thomas Nichols, \\\ „ 31 60 

Ebenezer Hudson, 15^ „ 24.00 

Obadiah Nichols, 54^ „ 16.00 

Laban Warrick, 3I „ 20.00 

George Wade, i^ „ i5-oo 

Roads into wood lots and pathways across pastures have 
been made and lost many times to suit the convenience 
of the growing community, but to trace them in their 
detail, where the feet of men have trod upon their errands 
of life, is impossible. 

Only these few main thoroughfares have been reviewed 
in this chapter, because they had been established and 
partially improved at about the period here reached in our 
narrative. 

There is, however, one of the ancient wood roads 
which formerly had much commercial importance and the 
remains of which may be traced at the present time. 

It is the old cartway in the southeast part of the town, 
next to Scituate, along which many hundreds, probably 
thousands of cords of wood were hauled, when Cohasset 
shipped stove wood to the town of Boston. 

Near the mouth of Bound Brook at William Veale's * 
present home there was a landing place in the marsh as 
indicated in the accompanying sketch, whei"e the "gon- 
dolas " of olden time were filled with cord wood to be 

* Mr. Veale guided the author .ilong this old way by thrusting a crowbar 
tlircugh the soft muck and striking the stones that had been laid there for a 
foundation of the road. 



2l8 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



taken down the Gulf. The old ruts of the road may still 
be followed back over the hills to the remains of an old 
bridge at Bound Brook below Turtle Island and on 
towards Beechwood. This is probably only one of several 
ancient roads no longer used, which served their day and 
generation and added to the resources of the town. 




^e.-.^ 



Plan showing some Points of Interest at the Southern Boundary 
OF THE Town. 



CHAPTER XII. 

INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 

THERE are pools in the course of a mountain stream 
where the waters rest from their headlong tumbling 
and wait awhile in a contemplative mood before plunging 
on again towards the sea. At such a place the course of 
our narrative now rests, while we consider some of the 
customs which were in vogue and the methods devised for 
getting life to yield her sweets. 

The ingenuity and economy practiced by our forefathers 
amazes us, but they were driven to it by necessity. They 
were compelled to produce nearly everything they used, 
for they had but little money with which to buy foreign 
manufactures and they had much inventive genius to 
supply their own needs. If the flood of merchandise 
which nowadays flows in upon us to supply food and cloth- 
ing from all parts of the world were suddenly stopped, we 
should be almost helpless ; but our forefathers lived and 
thrived with almost no help from outside sources. 

There was one little store * kept by George Wilson at 
the Cove which furnished needles, knickknacks, some kinds 
of cloth goods, a few drugs, and such other odds and ends 
of commerce as the people occasionally needed ; but his 
sales to the whole community were less than one family 
nowadays must buy. The flocks of sheep upon our hills 
were kept busy furnishing the wool to make homespun 
clothing. In the spring when their fleeces had grown to 
fullest thickness, and the summer was coming when no 

* George Wilson's " Trading Stock" in the year 1737 was valued at twenty-five 
pounds. See tax list owned by George Lincoln, of Hingham. The Hingham 
stores were the main source of purchasable goods for Cohasset until the beginning 
of this century, except for such persons as could use sailing craft for the Boston 
markets. 

21Q 



2 20 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

sheep cared for its fleece, then the flocks were gathered 
into the barnyards to be sheared. 

One by one they would be caught and thrown down on 
one side upon the barn floor ; and while some person held 
down the sheep's head another would " snip snip " with a 
pair of huge spring shears until half the fleece would roll 
off the upper side of the sheep, and then by deftly turn- 
ing over the patient animal the rest of its superfluous wool 
would be shaved off in one large, soft, warm roll. Then 
the sheep was permitted to scramble up on its feet and to 
run bleating into the flock, feeling too naked and queer to 
be very proud. 

The unpleasant task of washing* the wool prepared 
it for the carding process. Carding in later years was 
done at a mill, but earlier, at home with card combs made 
by fastening a multitude of wire stubs to the side of a 
little slab of wood. Carding the wool separated the fibers 
and rolled them into soft, fluffy rolls two thirds of an inch 
thick and about twelve inches long. These little rolls 
were ready for the spinning wheel, itself homemade from 
spoke to spindle-head. 

Many were the days when ambitious housekeepers in 
Cohasset worked at their wheels to make a large record of 
yarn. One end of a roll would be twisted upon the little 
steel spindle and held by the thumb and forefinger of the 
left hand, while the right hand set the big wheel revolving. 
The little spindle turned rapidly, but instead of winding 
the soft roll upon itself, the wool was twisted into a thread 
by slipping off the end of the spindle at each quick turn 
until twisted hard enough, when it was allowed to wind up 
on the inside part of the spindle. 

Another card roll was spliced on by a dexterous twist, 
and again the wheel went "whiz" and "whir" until the 
spindle was wound full with smooth, stout yarn. 

* Sheep were washed before shearing. Men hving to-day remember the scenes 
of sheep washing in the shallow water at the margin of Lily Pond. 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 2 2 I 

Stockings were knit from this, and the " click click ' of 
the knitting needles was in every home the occupation of 
those moments when the toiling women could sit down to 
rest. Such stockings were rough to the skin compared 
with our smooth factory-knit hose, but they were warm 
and sufficient. 

From yarn also was woven the cloth for other gar- 
ments. Some families of Cohasset during last century 
had looms for weaving, but usually a special weaver took 
their yarn and made it into such cloths as were desired, 
keeping a certain percentage of the yarn for his labor. 

Blankets made from some of this homespun yarn wore 
"like iron " ; the same ones that kept a boy warm in his 
first years would last until old age wore out him, but left 
the blankets intact for another generation. 

Soft cotton sheets were then unknown and very few 
were the linen ones, perhaps not a dozen in the whole 
community previous to the year 1750. One of the well- 
to-do families had but one sheet noted in its inventory as 
late as 1730. 

The finer qualities of lamb's wool were saved and used 
for the under-garments, while the coarser were good enough 
for blankets. Without sheets those blankets were a little 
scratchy at best ; but the more intimate under-garments 
revealed the quality of wool and the presence of pes- 
tiferous burrs that are almost inseparable from the wool 
fiber. The tender skin of many a boy has writhed under 
the scratching shirts of homespun made from the coarse 
wool of Cohasset sheep. But nature toughened the cuti- 
cle of each generation until the pain of the inuring pro- 
cess was passed. The outer garments were less bother- 
some by their coarseness and more durable. Shawls and 
dresses of homespun were dyed various colors or woven 
into checks from different colored wools. Coats and vests 
and pants of a dull gray color made from homespun wool 
were the universal attire of men, except on Sunday at 



2 2 2 HIS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 

meeting, when some of the more wealthy could wear 
" store clothes." 

Some silks were indulged in by the women of later 
years ; but before Revolutionary times the garments were 
almost wholly homemade from the very wool and flax. 

The culture of flax for making linen cloths was early 
introduced and continued until the days of some persons 
now living. 

The Indian aborigines used a coarser plant, " swamp 
milkweed," but our forefathers imported flaxseed and 
obtained a fine fiber for spinning. 

Many little patches of ground * were devoted to this 
herb, and it added one more material for human comfort. 
When the plants were ripe they were pulled and then laid 
under water or upon wet ground to rot the bark and the 
stem. After drying them, the bunches were put through 
the " breaker," which was a homemade machine much 
like a carpenter's sawhorse, upon the top of which a 
heavy piece of wood shut down into grooves across the 
stems of the flax. After a vigorous beating everything 
was broken except the tough, stringy inside bark of the 
herb. This was the "flax." 

The bunches of this flax, with its bits of stalk clinging 
to it, were beaten against a board by a stick or " swingle " 
until the coarser bits dropped off. Then the splinters and 
pieces of bark were still further combed out by drawing the 
flax through a hackle. This instrument, some good speci- 
mens of which are in our historical collection, was a thick 
bunch of sharpened spikes standing in a heavy piece of 
wood. 

After being combed, the flax fiber was ready for spin- 
ning and bleaching and weaving. 

Towels made from Cohasset flax are still to be seen in 

* In the Sohier estate just west of the observatory a flax field is now remem- 
bered to have been. Also in Robert T. Burbank's place on King Street is a flax 
field which he remembers. Many others could be named. In the year 1749 John 
Jacob was taxed for fifty pounds of flax, and Samuel Bates for thirty. 



IND US TRIES AND FIRESIDES. 223 

some families and several good specimens are in the 
town's collection. Linen sheets were commonly stiff and 
cold until worn flexible, and their color was a light brown 
unless unuSual care was taken to bleach them. The 
finer cloths were bleached by being laid upon the ground 
in the sunshine, where they could be sprinkled and turned 
and dried for several days until the color was drawn out. 

Thus by the culture of flax upon nearly every farm, 
all linen cloths and linen thread for housekeepers or shoe- 
makers were taken from the ground itself. 

The mention of shoemaker calls to mind another im- 
portant part of clothing. Farmers' boots were parts of 
their own cattle. When an animal was butchered, the 
skin of it was rolled up and taken to one of the tanners, 
— perhaps to Turtle Island, or in later years to the Lincoln 
tannery near the mouth of Bound Brook, or to one at the 
side of James Brook near the present Masonic Hall. 
Other tanneries there might have been where hides were 
soaked in the vats dug into the ground, and were tanned 
"by juices from the bark of our own oak and hemlock trees. 

The leather was made into boots and shoes for each 
family either by themselves or by a journeying cobbler.* 
This mender and maker of soles came annually to the 
homes of his customers with his own lapstone and ham- 
mer and awls to ''shoe up" the whole family. He sat in 
the corner and whittled out his wooden pegs from sticks 
of white birch, hammered the leather, trimmed and sewed 
and patched every kind of foot gear, from the baby's little 
shoe to the great brogan of the farmer that must go 
clumping through barnyard and forest. The stiff heavy 
leather of the farmers' boots was kept pliable and water- 
proof by repeated application of tallow.f From the 

*" He made both right and left shoes upon the same last," says one old resident. 

t James D. Lincoln has a tiny iron pot holding about a half pint in which 
tallow was melted before the old fireplace. On many a winter's day before the 
stiff boots were put on, they had to be softened by rubbing into the leather a quan- 
tity of hot tallow. 



2 24 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

softer leather of sheep or of calves or of deer the men 
had breeches made for the rough wear of the woods. 

Whips and harnesses and saddles and pillions and bags 
were not articles that necessitated a trip to -Boston, for 
in those days self-sufficiency was the motto of this com- 
munity. What one man could not make his neighbor 
could make, and they knew how to exchange their craft 
to their mutual weal. 

One article of clothing further should be mentioned — 
hats. The fur of squirrels and rabbits and beavers was 
easily prepared for the winter head gear, and for summer 
homemade straw hats were used. Their own rye straw, 
carefully selected and bleached by sulphur smoke in a 
barrel, was braided into narrow bands that could be sewed 
skillfully edge to edge until they made something that 
passed for a hat. 

The women wore shawls over their heads as frequently 
as they did bonnets. 

But simple as the clothing was in those days, a still 
more conspicuous frugality was practiced in the matter of 
food. Not that hunger was tolerated more then, but that 
the quality of food in most families was coarse and its 
variety narrow. The English stomach has never been 
very modest in its demands ; but these farmer and fisher 
folk of Cohasset had far less means of humoring their 
inherited appetites than their descendants have. Never- 
theless, the housekeepers of those days wrought miracles 
of cookery, and made from slender means some dishes 
that are hard to match by any of our modern improve- 
ments. Their luscious Indian puddings, baked for a small 
eternity in their brick ovens or boiled in a bag as the 
Indians themselves had cooked them, would bribe any 
man into good humor. Moreover, the corn they had was 
sweeter and fresher, for they took it themselves to the 
mill at Bound Brood or to the other gristmill at Straits 
Pond, where it was slowly ground without being over- 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 



225 



heated by the millstones, and was brought home so fresh 
and savory that one can readily imagine the pleasure of 
a poor family smelling their newly filled meal tubs. 

Their staff of life was a mixture of corn and rye meal, 
or as they fondly termed it "rye 'n' injun." The coarse 
bread made from this meal was heavy, hard, and black. 
Nowadays it is occasionally eaten as a luxury, but in those 
days it was upon every table and exercised every jaw and 
furnished the main amount of all the muscular energy 
expended in field or forest for generations. 

This "rye 'n' injun " meal appeared in the morning as 
porridge, stirred into a pot of boiling water that hung in 
the fireplace. This pasty and wholesome dish was the 
sovereign of the breakfast table ; from its great wooden 
bowl it sent up a column of steam into the cold morning 
air, a cloudy pillar before them leading them on to the 
labors of the day. Milk was used as a sauce for this 
hasty pudding, or later and better, molasses from the 
West Indies. 

Other methods of cooking "rye 'n' injun" were prac- 
ticed by the proficient and ingenious housewives, for 
cooking was their pride and accomplishment. Bannock 
bread or hoecake baked in a frying pan tipped up towards 
the fire was much relished with bits of crisp ham or 
bacon. 

Wheat flour was quite rare, so that cakes and bread 
and even pies were dependent upon rye, maize, and bar- 
ley. As to the clumsy utensils with which the culinary 
art was performed much could be lamented and some 
things praised. It must have taken remarkable skill to 
manipulate one of those big drafty fireplaces so as to get 
the best results. 

Their ovens were cavities in the huge brick chimneys 
at the side of the fireplace. A fire was built inside these 
ovens to heat the brick walls. The fire was then drawn 
out or the coals brushed into the corners and the food to 



2 26 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

be baked was put into the hot oven. But it is plain that 
the baking was always done in a falling heat. Further- 
more, it took so much time to get the oven just right that 
once a week was about as often as a housewife could 
bother with the baking. Consequently for most of the 
time stale baked food was eaten. It is on record that an 
apple pie baked at Thanksgiving time was not eaten until 
the next March. 

Mince and pumpkin pies of such an antiquity were the 
natural result of clumsy ovens. Before the days of the 
Revolution potatoes were not much used ; in fact, no such 
luscious varieties as we now have were known. The 
prejudice against this vegetable is illustrated by the 
superstition that " if a man ate them every day he could 
not live beyond seven years." * 

Turnips, pumpkins, and squashes were not uncommon 
vegetables and shared with the bread in giving companion- 
ship to the meat foods. 

No butcher carts in those days brought to every humble 
dwelling the fine-grained beef and mutton and pork from 
Chicago, a city then unborn in the far Western wilderness. 

Dreary days of corned beef and salt pork were passed 
in many a frugal family. 

Fresh meat was rare and was obtained only by the 
slaughter of their own animals. An ox or a cow that was 
past usefulness or a young steer that would not break well 
to the yoke was fattened for beef and killed in the barn 
by its owner or by some neighbor more skilled in the 
butcher's art. This was done in the fall of the year 
usually to avoid furnishing hay through the winter and 
also that the meat might be kept fresh for many weeks by 
freezing. The greater part was salted or " corned " for 
summer use. Some of it was "jerked" — cut into long 
strips and dried, a fashion of curing meat long in vogue 
among the Indians. 

♦Customs and Fashions in Old New England, p. 153. 



IND US TRIES AND FIRESIDES. 2 2 7 

Unable to dispose of all the carcass to advantage in 
these ways, pieces were sold to neighbors and friends for 
other commodities or were given in exchange for a similar 
piece of meat when the neighbor at some future time 
might have a "killing." The periods of fresh beef were 
interesting variations in the farmers' diet, but the quality 
of their beef was poor indeed compared with our stall-fed 
cattle from the West. Smaller "critters," like calves and 
sheep and pigs, were slaughtered in the summer if occa- 
sion required and if the farmer could afford it. 

Hams were cured and smoked by hanging above smol- 
dering corncobs for many days. Every edible portion 
was saved for some use. Even the bits of gristle and 
meat about the hog's head were made into a sort of 
"cheese," and other scraps were stuffed into cleansed 
entrails to become sausages. Calves' or sheep's heads 
were sometimes served with bits of heart or liver or other 
organs called the "pluck." "Calf's head and pluck" is a 
dish still occasionally known, but formerly quite common. 

The sheets of fat from the inside of a hog's abdominal 
cavity were rolled up as leaf lard and " tried out " for 
future use in making doughnuts and pastries. 

The abomasum or fourth stomach of calves was care- 
fully washed and preserved as rennet, for curdling the milk 
in cheese making. 

Thus the economy and ingenuity of our forefathers in 
a multitude of ways utilized the meat products of their 
own farms. But it seems clear that in spite of their 
roastings and broilings and stewings, those meats must 
have made monotonous meals ; for most families had no 
alternative but to keep eating upon any particular part in 
the season of it until it was gone, for nothing could be 
wasted. 

A good loin of beef well roasted upon a spit over a 
good fire of hard wood coals might have been toothsome 
at first, but it got quite tiresome when served for a week 



2 28 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

or two without the varieties of cooking which our modern 
stoves afford. But our Cohasset ancestors had a greater 
variety of flesh foods than farmers living away from the 
shore, for fish of many kinds came swarming almost to 
their doors. 

To catch mackerel, cod, bass, perch, alewives, smelts, 
eels, lobsters, and clams was an easy art where they 
swarmed the water as they did here. 

In fact, already before the year 1750 fishing had become 
a special industry of much importance. Boats were ply- 
ing the sea for food while the farmers were drawing food 
from the soil. In 1737 Canterbury Stoddard, son of 

// ■ / /• • ••' " C /^ "^ / - '■^: 1 

]///■'■ -i- . _ . _ .. ^ 

.//-I V'/ 

Beginning of a Logbook showing a Voyage to the West Indies, 

BY Peter Humphrey, son of Thomas, Commander of the 

Summer Land, 1754. 

Stephen Stoddard, of Beechwood, owned a vessel of 
eighteen tons and carried on a large business at catching 
fish until he was drowned off Wellfleet Harbor, Cape Cod, 
May 30, 1742, a young man of only thirty-three years. 

A still greater fishing vessel, measuring twenty-four 
tons, was sailed by John Stephenson, an enterprising 
young man who had deserted the English war ship Luci- 
tanus in Massachusetts Bay, escaping to Cohasset Harbor. 

A third fisherman as early as 1 737 was Roger Nichols, the 
son of Israel, whose home on Jerusalem Road was one of the 
first homes. His craft was only fifteen tons measurement. 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 



229 



Jeremiah Stoddard, Jr., had two small vessels of sixteen 
and of twelve tons. 

The largest vessel of all was an "eighty tonner," owned 
by Thomas Humphrey, who lived at North Cohasset and 
was taxed in the second precinct. 

David Bates, of King Street, known as " King David," 
whose cellar can still be traced in a field near Lily Pond, 
was taxed for a vessel of seven tons in the year 1737. 

These fishermen were the supporters of a large share 
of Cohasset prosperity, and their method of gaining a liv- 
ing is worthy of some attention ; but a better time for it 
will be in a later chapter when the palmiest days of our 
fishing industry will be treated. 

Not only fishing, but all sorts of merchandising engaged 
some Cohasset mariners before the year 1750. Such bits 
of records as have come to light tell of voyages to the 
ports along our Atlantic seaboard, to the Bermudas, to 
Barbadoes, and other West Indies, and even to the Euro- 
pean shore. 

These bits are from old notebooks* kept by the men; 



% 




'f4. ■ . ///// )i 



./// .//.• //^..7 - 







./ 7 // /; 



7; 






L 



*'l 



From Nathaniel Nichols' Notebook on Navigation, 
♦Loaned by Captain Henry Snow, 'of Hull. 



230 HIS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 

themselves and only a few have been saved, while the pub- 
lic records of that period, as we shall see later, have been 
destroyed. An interesting sketch by one of the early 
Cohasset mariners is reproduced here, showing a full- 
rigged ship of the early date 1745. It may have been 
fancy-born instead of real, and the children of a later 
generation may have marred it by inking over the masts 
down the sides of the hull ; but the sketch shows how at 
least one Cohasset boy of that early date looked forward 
to a mariner's career and how he studied to fit himself to 
be a commander. 

The merchandise brought from foreign shores to Boston 
and even to Cohasset added to the supplies produced at 
home. 

P'ruits of some sort were occasionally brought from the 
tropics, but those raised upon their own farms were the 
main reliance for fruit foods. Small orchards * of an acre 
or two were owned by nearly every farmer. Apples, 
pears, cherries, plums, and quinces were cultivated from 
the beginning, as soon as the settlers could clear enough 
land for planting. 

Preserves of these and of the many berries that grow 
wild upon our hills were made by the women. Apples 
were quartered and strung upon cords to hang in the sun 
or to hang from the ceiling of the kitchen. There is a 
high ledge of granite rock about a half mile back from 
King Street at the Burbank home called " Apple Rock," 
because the women used to go out upon it and there peel 
apples and spread them upon the sunny rock to dry. 

Apple trees formerly grew all about where now the 

*As early as March 14, 1646, the following fruit trees were mentioned in Hing- 
ham Town Records : — 
Apple tree — 5 shillings fine for injury by cattle. 
Pear tree — ,, „ „ ,, ,, ,, „ 

Peach tree — 3 ,, ,, ,, „ „ ,> 

Cherry tree — " „ „ „ 

" All others double damage." 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 23 I 

forest has recovered its hold ; but the tradition is pre- 
served in the name of the rock. 

While it is probable that this tradition does not reach 
back to so early a date as 1750, yet the case is a fair illus- 
tration of the earliest method of preserving apples. 

A large proportion of the apples in those days were 
made into cider, which was used in every home as a bever- 
age and in far too many as an intoxicant. 

About a favorite pear tree belonging to Aaron Pratt, of 
Beechwood, son of the first Aaron, there comes down 
through the generations an amusing incident. Aaron's 
faithful negro slave had tried to catch the thieves who 
persisted in robbing that pear tree, but with no success. 
When the time came for the negro to say his last earthly 
farewell he made this dying request, that he might be 
buried beneath that pear tree so that he could see " who it 
was that stole massa's pears." 

Two of the most interesting food processes on the farm 
were cheese making and butter making. Butter making is 
still a very common industry, but the old methods of 
doing it are fast becoming obsolete. The broom-handle 
churn, with its up and down dasher, is now only a relic, 
superseded by revolving churns; but the "chugg" and 
"splash" of the old dasher into the thick cream will be 
long a treasured memory with those who have heard it. 
The milk was set in broad, fiat dishes because it was 
thought that the broader the surface the more the cream. 
A huge clam shell was often used to skim off the leathery 
layer of cream, leaving the "skim milk" for calves and 
pigs when it could not be otherwise used. The modern 
method of pouring gallons of milk into one deep can and 
then after a few hours drawing off the skim milk from 
below was not dreamed possible. Much less could have 
been foreseen the creamery separator which does no wait- 
ing, but simply spatters and whirls every globule of cream 
out of the milk before it has time to settle. An old- 



2^2 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



fashioned milk pantry is still to be seen in the Mordecai 
Lincoln house, South Main Street. 

Cheese making was more difficult. The following ac- 
count of the process is given by Robert T. Burbank, the 
same process which has been used for centuries : — 

" Pour about ten gallons of milk into a cheese tub. Pour 




Photo, Ocfavius H. Reaniy. 

Cheese Press, Draining Basket, and Churn. 
The necessary implements on a humble farm in Cohasset a hundred years ago. 



into the milk a pint of liquid from a calf's rennet which 
has been soaking in a bowl. In about half an hour this 
acid turns the milk into curd floating upon whey. Cut the 
curd into small square blocks by running a wooden sword 
through it repeatedly. Spread a cheese cloth over'the tub, 
pressing it down upon the curd so that the whey will flow 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 233 

up through the cloth. Dip out the whey. Then empty the 
remaining curd into a basket lined with a sheet of cheese 
cloth so that the rest of the whey shall drain off into a 
tub underneath the basket. Turn the corners of the 
cloth over upon the curd and put on stones to press all 
day. The dry curd is then to be salted to taste and, if sage 
cheese is to be made, some sage leaves and corn leaves to 
color it and to give flavor are mashed and soaked until 
enough liquid is obtained to mix into the curd. Then for 
the press ! A stout frame with pulleys on each side is used 
to press down the curd into a wooden cylinder, squeezing 
out the juice until it can be made no harder. After sev- 
eral days of continuous pressure the cheese is taken out 
of its hoop. The cheese is done, and it needs only time 
to ripen and to strengthen it." 

Having glanced at a few primitive matters of clothing 
and food, some other interesting home industries may be 
reviewed'; for instance, soap making. 

Our forefathers and foremothers were not generally so 
scrupulous in the virtue of cleanliness as we are required 
to be. In fact, their work kept them more in thie dirt of 
the world, and their appliances for cleansing were far less 
effective than ours. Soft soap was their main defense 
against all that sullied or stained. 

It was made from the ashes of their own fireplaces and 
from greasy scraps of their own saving. It was made as 
follows : A barrel or leeching box full of wood ashes is 
set up on stones and water poured into it two or three 
gallons at a time at intervals of a few hours. In a day or 
two it begins to drip through a hole at the bottom into 
buckets, a liquid the color of strong tea or vinegar. It is 
lye. The other ingredient is grease, and this is saved 
scrap at a time all through the winter until soap-making 
time, when it is all cut up and melted in a great iron kettle 
holding about three pails. 



234 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



In later years two pounds of potash in dark-colored 
pieces were purchased at the store and put into the melted 
fat. This potash was dangerous stuff to handle. A man 
in Scituate, while breaking some pieces for his wife to use, 
made a piece fly into his eye and he lost his sight. Into 
the melted grease the lye was poured a little at a time, 
some one stirring the hot mass continuously for all one 
day and a part of the next with a long stick. The stick, 
usually of apple tree, was a sort of mascot, for good luck 
in soap making was not at everybody's bidding. Too 
much or too little lye or some unknown defect would 
easily spoil the soap. This uncertain behavior gave rise 
to witch stories, and a certain woman in Beechwood was 
accused of bewitching people's soap. To drive her out of 
the soap a black-handled butcher knife was once stabbed 
into the soap, and the soap-maker claimed that it cut off 
the witch's ear, so that she wore a shawl over her head ever 
afterwards to conceal the wound. 

But witches aside, the soap, if made successfully, be- 
came a shiny amber and gray mass poured into a wooden 
trough, where it thickened upon cooling till it became ropy 
or even waxy. 

A barrel of ashes made a half barrel of soap, and it 
was used for laundry or bathing or scrubbing, or for any- 
thing that needed soap. 

Next to soap making an interesting process which pre- 
vailed in every home was candle making. Tallow "dips" 
were used for many generations until tin molds came into 
use. 

A row of flax wicks dangling from a stick were dipped 
into melted tallow. Some of the tallow would harden 
upon the wicks, then a second dip would catch more tal- 
low. So by many dippings the candles would grow thicker 
until they reached the required size, a little thicker at the 
bottom, of course, as any stalagmite would be. A few 
hundred could be made at the same time if tallow enough 
was at hand. 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 



235 



Bayberries that grow plentifully in our woods yielded 
a wax about one pound from a bucketful, that was made 
into bayberry candles or mixed with common tallow to 
make the tallow candles a little harder. In later years 
the tallow was poured into tin candle molds, but the 
"dips " were more common even then. 

Both kinds gave dull enough light and a foul stench 
when they were blown out. To make a poor lantern for 
night traveling one of these candles was placed inside of 
a tin cylinder pierced with hundreds of nail holes; but 
this was a luxury that did not come until the more recent 
times of our forefathers. The sun was ruler in those days 
more than it is now with our artificial lights turning night 
into day. 

Their labors began when the sun peeked above the 
horizon, but when he turned his back upon them at night 
the great swathing of darkness was too thick to be pierced 
by the tiny flickering candles that struggled to be seen in 
the dark dwellings scattered throughout the town. 

One of the industries of a winter evening was broom 
making. The father would take a birch sapling long 
enough for a broom, and sitting before the fireplace, would 
sliver one end of it with his jackknife, patiently stripping 
it one shaving at a time, until the end of the stick was a 
bunch of long slivers too tough to break off easily. Then 
from a place above the bunch other slivers were peeled 
and turned down upon the others until the whole made a 
thick, round broom, all from the same stick of birch. The 
children were delighted to sit near, catching the splinters 
that accidentally were broken off and weaving them into 
little baskets or fancy figures. 

The making of flag-bottomed chairs* was also a com- 
mon trick of economy. 

But how many more interesting industries might be 
described that furnished the comforts of the fireside .-* 

* The town paid Dr. Beal for " Bottoming a Great Cliair for >>^ School house, 2nd 
Parish, one shiUing four pence," February 19, 1765. 



236 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

The labors of the farm, plowing, planting, hoeing, 
and harvesting, were essentially the same as now, where 
in other towns farms* are worked. 

The multitude of stones that had to be cleared out of 
our soil were placed into stone walls to succeed the rail 
fences which were first built for boundaries. 

The earliest stone wall f mentioned was in 1673, when 
Daniel Gushing, Sr., bought an acre of land in exchange 
for Cohasset cord wood, lying next to the marsh near 
Peck's Meadow — land that is now Zachary T. Rollings- 
worth's. But stone walls were built at odd times in the 
spring or fall through many years of land clearing. 

The building of houses to dwell in was long and weari- 
some labor. Saw pits % can still be found where boards 
were rived out. Bricks were made from the clay of our 
marsh land, which was kneaded and mixed with sand by 
the trampling hoofs of oxen. Plaster or mortar was 
made by mixing powdered shells § with mud. During the 
period covered in this chapter several houses were plas- 
tered outside on the ends for durability and warmth. 

Framing and mortising of timbers in a way that saved 
nails and wasted time was much indulged. The famous 
"cock tenon and mortise " can still be seen in the top of 

* The following town vote for 175 1 shows the main articles of merchandise : — 

" Voted to raise the value of ninety pounds Lawful! Money for Defraying the 
necessary charges arising within the said town the year ensuing to be paid in the 
sundry Articles hereafter enumerated ; being the produce of the country, viz. grain, 
Indian, Rye, Barley, Beef, pork, Merchantable pailes, wood, sheepswool, flax. 

Butter and chees ." Upon the committee of nine chosen to determine the value 

of these products were two Cohasseters, Isaac Lincoln and Jonathan Beal, 3d. 

t" February 21, 1673, Benjamin Lincoln sold to Daniel Gushing, Sr., from lot 
twenty-two of 2nd division upland for a valuable consideration paid in cordwood 
delivered at his dwelling house in Hingham by Daniel Gushing, Sr., one acre en- 
closed by a stone wall set up by said Daniel Gushing on the west, the reserved 
Highway was on the east, Daniel Cushings salt marsh on the north, and John 
Lazell's land on the south." — Hingham Records. 

J Two or three are on the west side of South Main Street, on the sidehill back 
of Loring Litchfield's. I have seen one in the woods west of Lily Pond next to 
an old wood road. Many others may be known. 

\ The old home where Dr. Osgood lately dwelt is plastered with clam-shell 
mortar. Also was the old Walter Briggs place at Scituate Beach. 



IND US TRIES AND FIRESIDES. 237 

wall posts both in dwellings and in barns, and even in the 
church on the Common. , 

Doors and windows and all finish parts were worked 
out by hand from the pine logs. Even the furniture, 
what little was used, was so made by the more skillful 
workmen. And it must be remembered that the tools 
used were of the rudest sort, not the fine machine-made 
cutting implements that a cabinetmaker now handles. 
The shipbuilding carried on at the Cove and at Little 
Harbor in those days was of the same tedious sort. 

An amusing incident is related by one of the oldest 
women of the town which was still more anciently related 
to her, about a launching which was to have taken place 
at Little Harbor. 

It was the custom to make a social fete of any work 
that required united labor, like house raising, where the 
yeomen were stimulated to heavy lifting by frequent 
draughts of liquor, or like hog slaughtering, where the 
participants registered their guess at the porker's weight 
with a drink of rum. 

At this launching in Little Harbor the men worked to 
clear away the props and drank rum to become merry, 
while they waited for the tide to come in. But nature 
was slower than human passion. Before the tide had 
reached its full, the men had reached theirs, and they 
soon lay around their unlaunched craft in helplessness. 
The tide crept in and saw the shameful sight, and looked 
up to the waiting ship ; buf she had no hand to help her 
to the waves and the tide crept out again. 

The waking men had nothing but chagrin to show for 
their wantonness. 

This vice was growing bothersome to the church even 
then, for two of its members had publicly to be cen- 
sured for drunkenness, and after a public penitence they 
fell again. 

Churchgoing in those days was a universal custom. 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 




Pliuto, <; H. Roberts. 

Ready for Church a Hundred Years Ago. 
Calash bonnet, shawl, etc. 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 239 

Into the little old meeting-house on the plain came scuff- 
ing upon the wooden floor the heavy boots of some 
twenty or more laboring men each Sabbath, with twice as 
many women and children. 

In the gallery sat what few negroes and Indians* were 
slaves of the settlers. On the rude benches across the 
main floor the men sat in one seition, the women and 
children in another, and the deacons f in front of the 
pulpit, looking towards the people. 

A very few could sing a little, and the minister, Nehe- 
miah Hobart, could preach a good deal, so that a long 
service was carried through ; and then after a noon hour 
of social and other refreshment, the afternoon service 
was undertaken. Sleepiness prevailed very generally in 
the second service when the sermon was in course. But 
the spirit of true religion in some persistent way would 
rise above all natural hindrances and give to human souls 
a bit of spirituality. The servants and small boys could 
go barefoot to meeting during the summer, but the girls 
and women and freemen who had finer self-esteem must 
appear in shoes, even if they walked most of the way 
across pastures barefoot with shoes in hand. For about 
ten years there were no pews in the church, but privacy 
and comfort soon demanded this change. When the light 
was cut off from some pews by the height of the parti- 
tions, pew windows were allowed to be cut through the 
outside walls at the expense of the owner.:}: 

Attendance at church grew with the settlement until in 

* The following persons owned Indian or negro slaves in 1749: Stephen Stod- 
der I, James Stetson i, John Jacob i, Joseph Bates 4, Aaron Pratt i, Daniel 
Tower i, Samuel Bates 2, David Bates i, Daniel Lincoln i, Edward Battles I. 
Sarah Wapping, an Indian woman, was taken into communion with the church 
January 7, 1737-38. 

t yohn Jacob was first deacon, chosen March 25, 1722. Joseph Bates, second 
deacon, chosen March 5, 1726-27. Lazarus Beal, third deacon, chosen March 13, 

1737- 

+ December 30, 1731, Nathaniel Nichols was voted liberty to do this. March 15, 
1735-36 Widow Susanna Lincoln was voted this privilege. 



2 40 ^rS Ton Y OF COHA SSE T. 

the year 1746 it became necessary to build a larger and 
more comfortable house of worship. In June a committee 
of three, Joshua Bates, James Stetson, and John Stephen- 
son, were appointed to draw a plan for a new meeting- 
house. The plans were accepted the next September, 
and a committee of five was appointed to compute the 
cost. It was decidec? to divide one half of the cost 
among the pews to be built, leaving the other half for 
general assessment. 

Each man paid ten pounds for his pew, and a building 
committee was chosen October 20, 1746, to build the 
house we now see upon the Common. It was finished the 
next year, but more can be said of the church life in a 
later chapter. 

One of the cases of self-sufficiency practiced in those 
early days was in the care of the sick. Physicians were 
not very plentiful or skillful in those times. The first pro- 
fessional physician in Cohasset was later than 1750, Dr. 
Lazarus Beal, of Rocky Nook. In Scituate as early as 
1 7 19 Dr. Isaac Otis was practicing, and Dr. Benjamin 
Stockbridge as early as 1730. 

But herbs and home concoctions were the main reliance 
of Cohasset settlers in battling with disease ; bunches of 
mint, fennel, liverwort, tansy, anci many other herbs that 
were considered medicinal were kept hanging in spare 
rooms or attics, ready to be steeped and made into strong 
messes of stuff for patients to swallow. Some women in 
evQry town had a genius at nursing the sick, and they 
remembered all the nostrums for human ills they e>ier 
heard. 

Native sense and a miraculous intuition sometimes com- 
bined with blundering superstition in these unschooled 
physicians ; but in the case of anything serious, like diph- 
theria or typhoid fever, there was small hope of recovery. 

In the fall of 1735 there fell upon this community that 
dreadful germ disease now called diphtheria, which in 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 



241 



these days is so summarily stopped by antitoxine, but 
which had made cruel havoc with families of children for 
many generations. That fall it began, November 8, by 
sweeping into the grave a sixteen-year-old girl, Elizabeth 
King. The next month four more children from five to 
eleven years of age were buried. 

The year turned into January when three more fol- 
lowed. Tn February and March four more. Before the 
next November nineteen Cohasset children had been 
smitten by this terrible foe. Then came a rest for a few 
months ; but the next March five more perished, four of 
them from one family in Beechwood, whose parents, left 
childless and heartbroken, added their grief to the sadness 
of the whole community. 

The good pastor Nehemiah Hobart records the sad list 
as deaths by "fever and sore throat," and one feels a pity 
for their necessary ignorance, both of the disease and its 
cure. 

Two of his own little boys were among the unfortu- 
nates, one of them John Jacob Hobart, named from the 
first deacon, who was childless. 

The reference to these sad ravages of diphtheria calls 
to mind a custom of old-fashioned burials. Cohasset set- 
tlers who had burying land in Hingham took thither their 
dead for many years after the first homes were set up 
here. The earliest recorded burial in our town is that of 
Sarah Pratt, first wife of Aaron Pratt, who died July 22, 
1706, aged forty-two years. She was buried in the public 
land which lay in front of Daniel Lincoln's lot next to 
Little Harbor. This burial place has since become named 
Central Cemetery, but no mention of it can be found in 
any of the precinct records. 

A family burial ground was established by Israel 
Nichols back of his dwelling on Jerusalem Road next to 
Straits Pond. The road as it now runs, north of where 
the house stood, touches a clump of bushes which conceal 



242 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



the old gravestones.* The earliest date on them is 1713- 
14, when the little four-year-old daughter Experience was 
buried. 

A few hundred yards west of this there is another 
burial place beside Rattlesnake Run on the south side of 
the road. The earliest stone is for Mrs. Elizabeth 
Nichols, who died in 1746, whom we remember as 
Daniel Lincoln's daughter, a child of one of the first 
homes. 

For the Rocky Nook settlers a cozy little cemetery 
was made on the north side of Cedar Street near 
Turkey Meadow, the earliest stones being dated May 4, 
1760, when the wives of both Jonathan and Obadiah 
Beal died. 

The Beech wood Cemetery was purchased in 1737,! out 
of the front end of the lots of Aaron Pratt and Isaac 
Bates, by a syndicate consisting of Jonathan Pratt, 
Stephen Stoddard, Jr., Israel Whitcomb, Ebenezer Kent, 
Prince Joy, and Joshua Bates, Jr. It was a strip of land 
one and a half rods wide and twelve rods long, divided 
into six lots, where the dead of that neighborhood might 
be buried. 

The burial services were sad and silent, without hymn 
or scripture or poem or sermon, when all stood bathed in 
grief and in sympathy. 

But this chapter must not end in sadness. The fire- 
sides of olden time were enlivened by many games in 
winter evenings, and in summer the bathing or boating 
or other outdoor amusements were indulged by natures 
which no hard labor could suppress. The huskings and 
quiltings and dances of our ancestors have been frequently 
told. 

One custom as old as humanity and a perpetual source 

*Dr. O. H. Howe has carefully copied all of these inscriptions as well as those 
in the neighboring burial place at Rattlesnake Run. 
t The deed is in the historical collection. 



INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES, 243 

of enjoyment was the celebration of weddings. We are 
fortunate in having a vivid description* of one of these 
romantic events from an eyewitness, Mrs. Job Whitcomb, 
of Beechwood, who was fourteen years old in the year 
1765 when the wedding occurred. 

It was the wedding of John Pratt, the oldest son of the 
Aaron who settled Beechwood, living next to the ceme- 
tery where Doane Street now is cut through. This bride- 
groom, John Pratt, was to wed Bethia Tower, the eighteen- 
year-old daughter of Daniel Tower who lived on King 
Street. 

The narrator says that the invited guests, "a company 
of young men, came out through the woods riding upon 
horses, each one having his girl sitting behind him on the 
pillion. They paraded in front of the house of the groom 
and my beau, Joseph Whitcomb, rode his horse up to the 
bars. I climbed up on the bars and mounted the pillion 
behind him. We rode into the company. John Pratt, 
the bridegroom, came out of the house dressed with a 
three-square cocked hat, white coat with black glass but- 
tons, knee breeches with buckles, up to the fashion. I 
wore for a bonnet a dark hat with a low crown, wide rim, 
a broad red ribbon tied around it, with two long bows ; and 
two long ends came down over the shoulders. The bride- 
groom came out of his house down to the bars, mounted 
his horse, rode single to the head of the company and the 
rest all followed two abreast. We went down by the 
Cohasset meeting-house, up Deer Hill Lane (Sohier 
Street) to Mr. Daniel Tower's house on King Street 
where the bride lived. We had a splendid wedding and 
the couple came to live in the groom's own house next to 
his father's." 



* From the diary of Marshall Pratt, grandson of John Pratt, the bridegroom. 



244 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



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INDUSTRIES AND FIRESIDES. 



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Widw. Mary Willson . 
Jonah Patterson . . . 
John Stephenson Jr. 
Cornelius Tower . . , 
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Jacob Bates 

Jonathan Neal. . . . 


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Mordecai Lincoln . . 
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Emerson Orcutt . . . 
Isaac Lincoln .... 


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Jacob Lincoln .... 
Philip Willcutt. ; . . 
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Amos Joy 

Joshua Bates Jr. . . . 
"Ebenezer Kent . . , 
Joseph Souther . . . 
Joshua Bates 3d . . . 

Aaron Pratt 

Stephen Stodder Jr. 
Jonathan Pratt . . . 
"Israel Whetcomb . . 
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Daniel Tower .... 
Benjamin Rotch . . . 



246 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



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Thomas Lincoln . 
John Beal . . . 
Samuel Gushing . 
Shadrach Tower . 
David Bates . . 
Daniel Tower, Junr. 
Daniel Lincoln . 
Jonathan Bates . 
Thomas James . 
Hezekiah Tower . 
David Tower . . 
John Burbanks . 
"Elisha Lincoln 
Ebenr. Orcutt. Jr. 
Daniel Souther . 
Gushing Kilby 
Abaishai Slulson . 
Gershom Marble . 
Obadiah Stephens 
John Kilby . . . 
Stephen Lasell 
Smith Woodward 
Noah Nichols . . 
Thomas Gross 
Micah Jepson . . 
Job Tower . . . 
John Hudson . . 



CHAPTER XIII. 

SEPARATION FROM HINGHAM. 

FOR more than a half-century this community lived 
as a precinct of Hingham. After obtaining from 
the Legislature of the province of Massachusetts the 
authority to hold public meetings and to levy taxes in the 
year 17 17, they continued to grow in numbers and 
strength, until in the year 1770 they became separated 
from the mother town. 

This period of precinct life and growth is now to be 
studied. 

The community had several names by which either con- 
temptuously or cordially it was designated. " Little 
Hingham " was one sobriquet, East Precinct, Second Pre- 
cinct, Second Parish, and Hassit were others ; but how- 
ever it might be named, the community was very conscious 
of itself. A distinct character had been gained by their 
persistent courage in battling for autonomy. They were 
so far from Hingham, that on their occasional visits for 
trading and other purposes, they were generally known as 
outsiders. 

In the town meetings they formed a body of men whose 
interests were so identified that they could be counted as 
a solid opposition to all measures that did not fairly ben- 
efit Cohasset. 

This sense of solidarity was further developed by their 
own precinct meetings held in their own church upon the 
Common. Here they chose a moderator for themselves, 
a clerk and assessors of their own ; in fact, they did in a 
small way what town meetings do. Furthermore, the town 
of Hingham appointed each year among the constables 
one from Cohasset, who should collect the taxes from this 



±/^S HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

neighborhood, and sometimes even one of the selectmen 
of the town was chosen from this precinct.* As already 
has been mentioned, John Jacob, one of our precinct, was 
elected to the high office of representative for Hingham, 
at the General Court in Boston, from 1726 to 1733. 

All of these experiences in the art and methods of 
public administration were steadily developing the Co- 
hasset people into feelings of self-sufficiency in matters 
of government. 

In the mean time their financial strength had been grow- 
ing as well as their numbers. Their industry and econ- 
vomy was heaping up little fortunes in many homes. 

Boston's growth was furnishing a market for the prod- 
uce of farms, and stove wood f was shipped incessantly 
from our harbor to keep citizens of that town warm in 
winter. Our shipbuilding at that period may seem small 
to modern eyes, for vessels of four tons or even as large 
as eighty tons, such as we had in the year 1737, would not 
cut much of a figure in modern commerce, but they were 
large enough to bring prosperity in those days. Mackerel 
and cod were sold at Boston by Cohasset fishermen, bring- 
ing money into their homes. 

In the year 1737 there were eight vessels, averaging 
twenty-two tons each, that were taxed to men of this pre- 
cinct, while in the mother town there were only six vessels 
owned, averaging less than twelve tons each. One hun- 
dred and seventy-six tons of shipping belonged to this 
precinct against sixty-nine tons in the first precinct. This 
enterprise, so far outreaching the mother town, was an 
element of power in bringing about the town's independ- 
ence, for it brought sailor families here, and made ship- 

* Ibrook Tower, 1699. Stephen Stoddard, 1711. Samuel Gushing, 1731, 1732, 
1746, 1749. Samue! Orcutt, 1733, i734. 1736. 1741. i742- John Jacob, 1742, 1743, 

^745- 

t One instance of the wood business is shown in a document bearing the date 
December 23, 1727, in which one lot in the Second Division furnished one hundred 
cords of wood to John Beal, who leased it for ;^40. 



SEPARA TION FR OM H INCH AM. 249 

building grow, as well as furnishing a commerce direct 
with Boston instead of being tied to the Hingham stores. 

Besides cod and mackerel and other small fish, even 
whales were captured by our fishermen. As early as 1738 
one of our young men, John Marble, was recorded by the 
first pastor * as a whaler who died suddenly at Cape Cod 
while on one of these whaling trips. 

How many more whalers there might have been whose 
good fortune kept their names out of the "death" list 
cannot be told. They cruised upon the banks along the 
shore of Cape Cod, " putting in " at any convenient place 
to "try out" the oil of such marine monsters as they 
might catch. 

Year by year this fishing business gained in importance. 
From eight vessels in 1737 the fleet increased to thirty 
vessels in 1768;! and it will be readily seen that thirty 
vessels, requiring from two to five seamen each, must have 
accumulated some wealth in this little precinct. The 
building of these vessels by Cohasset shipwrights out of 
Cohasset timber meant a great deal of summer and winter 
hauling for farmers' oxen, as well as the daily toil of a 
score or more men at the shipyards in Little Harbor and 
the Cove. Our coopers also were in no small demand to 
make barrels and casks for packing fish, and these all in 
turn made a market for farmers and millers. 

The mention of millers calls to mind the items of 
sawmill and corn mill occurring in the tax list of 1737. 
A half of a sawmill was taxed to Joshua Bates for that 
year; but we know that he owned only seven sixteenths 
of it, for he sold out to Aaron Pratt four years afterwards 
for twenty pounds his seven sixteenths. This mill was 
on Turtle Island, where the old iron works had been ; but 

* See Nehemiah Hobart's Diary, p. 26, or History of Hingham, Vol. I, Pt. H, 

P- 173- 

t " In 1768 there were 30 vessels owned in the second precinct aggregating 305 
tons — the smallest of these was 4 tons, the largest was 35 tons burden." — George 
Lincoln, History of Hingham, Vol. I, Pt. H, p. 171. 



•50 



HISTORY OF coil ASSET. 



the iron works had long been abandoned, and the sawmill, 
under the management of Aaron Pratt the second, made 
lumber for many Cohasset dwellings and vessels. It is 
said that this Aaron Pratt was almost a banker for many 
Cohasset homes, because his lumber deals made so many 
housebuilders his debtors. Another half of a sawmill was 
taxed in the year 1737 to Joseph Hudson, who lived on 
Jerusalem Road near Straits Pond. He owned further- 
more three sixteenths of the corn mill that was then stand- 
ing at the outlet of Straits Pond. Another three six- 
teenths of this corn mill belonged to Andrew Beal, a 
Cohasseter. But there was another corn mill at the 
opposite end of the community, at the mouth of Bound 
Brook, owned by the sons of Mordecai Lincoln, Jacob and 
Isaac. Jacob lived in Scituate, but Isaac was a Cohasseter, 
and dwelt in the old gambrel-roofed house now standing a 
few hundred feet from Bound Rock on South Main Street. 

All these Cohasset mill owners were adding strength to 
the community by their product and their profit. 

It may have been during this precinct period that an- 
other corn mill was started in the woods a half mile 
beyond King Street, on a stream that flows into Turkey 
Hill Run. To-day the remains may be seen by an ex- 
plorer in the woods. The dam is there, a mound of earth 
heaped up across a narrow valley on both sides of a little 
brook, and a millstone partly cut lies upturned in a thicket 
of beech trees about three hundred yards to the northeast 
of the dam. This half-finished upper stone we have called 
the Mystery Millstone, for no one living knows anything 
about its origin or the reason for abandoning it. 

It is even suggested that an Indian attack might have 
scared away the makers ; but a more credible guess is that 
this favorable spot for a dam and a suitable flat stone thus 
near to it might have lured on some industrious Cohas- 
seter until he saw that the project would not pay. The 
stone was probably broken off by nature from a round 



SEPARATION FROM HINGHAM. 



251 



glacial bowlder which now rests a few feet away, and lay 
with its flat, circular side upturned, suggesting the idea of 
a millstone. The author has seen just such another stone 
in the woods a mile back of the old Mordecai Lincoln 
house ; but any of the glacial bowlders are so subject to 
cracks as to make poor millstones. However, two corn 
mills were enough. 

Of the other industries that urged on the precinct's 




Photo, M. H. Reatuy. 

Mystery Millstone. Back of Town Hill, half mile west 
OF King Street. 
No one knows who made it, nor when, nor why. 

growth as early as the year 1737 coopering was an impor- 
tant one. Fish barrels and firkins and tubs had to be 
made in some abundance to supply the growing trade with 
Boston ; so that several coopers, among whom were Heze- 
kiah Tower and his son David, were kept busy for a part 
of the year in their little shops, or in sheds at the back of 
their houses. 



252 fflS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 

There are no shops mentioned in the tax list of 1737, 
but there were doubtless tan shops, blacksmith shops, and 
cooper shops, for those industries were practiced in this 
precinct at that time. A blacksmith shop on the west 
side of Beechwood Street, not far from Turtle Island, is 
said to have forged out the bolts for some of the first 
shipbuilding in Cohasset. 

Nevertheless, we were but a small community and 
scattered in those days. Only about fifty houses could be 
counted in the whole precinct at the year 1737. Of these 
King Street had perhaps six ; Rocky Nook and Hall Street, 
eight ; Beechwood, ten ; Jerusalem Road, six ; Main Street, 
thirteen for its whole length of three miles ; and the Cove 
region had about seven houses. This is a careful estimate 
from a study of the names in the tax list of 1737. 

It will be noticed that this distribution was governed by 
the need of land for farms, so that the Cove region, which is 
now the most densely populated, was then fairly empty. 
But the fishing industry had just begun its growth, and bits 
of land large enough to hold a sailor's home near by the 
sea, nestling against rocky ledges or edging out upon the 
marshes, were soon to be in demand. 

Growth was slow, and how could it have been other- 
wise .'' There was no idle capital in those days eagerly 
seeking investment in new communities, and our citizens 
could use for advancing their fisheries or manufactures 
only such means as their tireless energy and pinching 
economy had slowly accumulated. 

This handicapping may be readily seen by comparison 
with the fishing industry of Hingham at that period. 

Although Cohasset enterprise made her foremost in 
this business, so that she had more than twice the tonnage 
of the mother town in 1737, yet as soon as the greater 
capital of that town began to pour into the lucrative busi- 
ness, Cohasset was readily surpassed. The Leavitts and 
Captain Francis Barker of Hingham so advanced the 



SEPARA riON FR OM HINGHAM. 253 

marine industry of the mother town beyond us that in 
the year 1754 there were two wharves in Hingham owned 
by them, while we had only one, and its size was about 
one fifth that of the Hingham wharfage. 

This first wharf at our Cove large enough to be taxed 
as valuable property (in 1754) was owned by Samuel Bates, 
whose enterprise was a boon to Cohasset and whose 
descendants were kings in the Cohasset fisheries until the 
fisheries were abandoned. The place of that first wharf 
was probably at or near where the late John Bates' wharf 
now is ; for this last fishing merchant was a nephew of 
Samuel Bates' grandson, and the successor to the original 
business. 

But the fishing industry was only a small one at the 
date of 1737, and whether there was any wharf at all 
worth taxing is not shown by the tax list of that year. It 
may be well to say here that the recurrence of this date 
1737 is not because the date marks an epoch in Cohasset 
history, but because the tax list of that date is the only 
one the author can find subsequent to the year 171 1 until 
the year 1753. 

The houses of the precinct at that time numbered about 
fifty, as we have noted already. How many of those fifty 
houses have survived the decay of a hundred and sixty- 
one years until the present time cannot be told with 
certainty ; but the following have been traced to that time 
and earlier. 

Perhaps the oldest fragment of a dwelling house now 
standing is a part of the present Norfolk House. Thomas 
James settled at that spot upon the end of the strip 
(lot 59) which was granted to his father, Francis James. 
The exact date of his settlement is not known ; but he 
married in 1704 the daughter of Ibrook Tower, who then 
was living where Abraham H. Tower now lives beside our 
Common, and it is fair to infer that Thomas James set up 
his first home in the year 1704 or 1705. 



•54 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



It is said by descendants that at least a part of the 
original house is now included in the enlarged building 
known as the Norfolk House. 

This house has only a fragment that is so old ; but 
probably the oldest complete house now standing is the 
Lincoln dwelling upon South Main Street, where Morde- 
cai Lincoln is supposed to have built it for his son Isaac 
as early as 1717. 




Photo, Florence R. Rhodes. 

Lincoln Homestead, South Main Street. 
Built about 1717 by Mordecai Lincoln, ancestor of President Abraham Lincoln. 

Next to this probably is a part of the home of Robert 
T. Burbank on King Street nearly opposite the old cellar 
of Hezekiah Tower. The back part of this house stands 
over an old cellar wholly separate from the front cellar, 
which itself dates back fully a century and a half. This 
rear part is thought to have been built as early as the 
year 1720. 



SEPARATION FROM I/IN G HAM. 



255 



The next in antiquity, and one that has the most defi- 
nite record of all, is the home of the late Rev. Joseph 
Osgood, D.D. 

It was built by the first pastor of the town, Nehemiah 

Hobart. 

In his diary he says, " Raised my House Oct. 15, 1722. 
I came to Dwell in my House Jan. 20 1724-25." This 
and the Lincoln house are now substantially as they were 




Photo, Mrs. E. E. Ellms. 

Home of the late Rev. Joseph Osgood. 
Built 1722 by Rev. Nehemiah Hobart, the first pastor of the precinct, 

at first in general shape, the Lincoln house having a 
gambrel roof and this a straight gable. 

Another peculiar style of architecture is the gable roof 
of many old houses having the front rafters so short that 
there is room for two stories in front, while the back 
rafters slope nearly to the ground upon the other side. 

A fine sample of this sort is the present home of 
Samuel James, built in the year 1729. 



256 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

It stands upon King Street at the west end of the lot 
that formerly reached to the site of the Norfolk House. 

Thomas James, who built as we supposed in 1705 
where the Norfolk House now is, gave to his oldest son, 
Thomas, the upper end of his lot, and there in the year 
1729 the young Thomas James built his home that still 
remains in the family name. 

If only some one could discover the tax lists that have 
been lost previous to the list of 1737 several more ancient 
houses could be traced back. 

There is one on North Main Street which has an 
Indian legend connected with it going back to a very 
early date. It is the home of Thomas Lincoln Bates and 
of the late John Bates, his brother. The widow of Heze- 
kiah Lincoln used to tell her little grandson, Thomas 
Bates, the father of the two brothers named, that the 
Indians long ago used to glide unseen up to the door, and, 
pushing it open, they would ask in a gruff tone for some 
corn. The grandmother told many times how startled 
she had been by the stealthy savages, whose camp was in 
some neighboring hollow, and whose indolent ways made 
begging for corn a necessity. The father of this grand- 
mother was Hezekiah Lincoln, whose boyhood was men- 
tioned in our chapter on "The First Homes" ; and if he 
built this house when he married, it would date back to 
the year 171 1. 

Of the fifty houses in the tax list of 1737 some others 
are supposed now to be standing in Beechwood : Prince 
Joy's, Ebenezer Kent's, Stephen Stoddard's, Isaac Bates', 
and perhaps others named in the list. 

One or two of the old houses on King Street near to 
the railway station of that name were Beal houses, and 
may be followed back to a date much earlier than 1737. 

To any one that will study the list of fifty dwellings of 
that year there may come the discovery of still further 
ancient dwellings, but enough have been mentioned to 



SEPARA TION FR OM BINGHAM. 257 

preserve in our day the flavor of those early precinct 
days. 

It is interesting to note, furthermore, that more than 
twenty-five acres of orchard, eighty acres of tillage land, 
and one hundred and fifty acres of mowing land were in use 
as early as 1737 ; but such was the growth of the precinct 
and the energy of its inhabitants that these figures were 
all doubled in sixteen years, as the tax list of 1753 reveals. 

The houses had multiplied from about fifty to nearly 
one hundred ; and the doubling process was so universal 
in the wealth and population of the precinct that this 
sixteen-year period from 1737 to 1753 might fairly be 
named the hundred per cent era. 

It was at about the height of this energetic progress 
that the efforts to break away from the domination of the 
Hingham town government were inaugurated. 

The vigorous precinct had been forced by its growth to 
tear down the old meeting-house and to build larger. 

No sooner was the new large building finished than 
the agitation began which culminated in the charter for 
the separate township of Cohasset. 

On February 11, 1751, the pulse of the community was 
first taken upon the subject of separation. The record 
reads : " A vote was tryed whether we should Petetion the 
other part of y'^ Town that we might be sett off a distinct 
District or Township — passed in y'^ affirmative." John 
Stephenson, Samuel Gushing, and Isaac Lincoln, Jr., were 
appointed a committee to present this petition at the next 
town meeting at Hingham, in May of that year. 

They performed their disagreeable duty on May 16, 
1751, and the Hingham records read as follows: "The 
Petition of the Inhabitants of Cohassett Read & the Ques- 
tion put whether the prayer of the petition be Granted — 
passed in the negative." 

This was the first repulse in their twenty years of 
petitioning for town rights. The next move was to ap- 



258 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

peal to the General Court ; but at the August meeting 
of that year the effort was put off. 

After talking about the matter all that winter and 
grumbling about their having to travel so far to Hingham 
town meetings over their wretched roads, they voted again 
the next spring, March 4, 1752, to petition the town for a 
divorce. They added two more votes : first, if Hingham 
refused, the matter should be carried to the General 
Court; and second, if Hingham consented, they would 
go to that same higher legislative body to have the matter 
confirmed. Money was appropriated from the treasury to 
pay the expenses of this petitioning. On May 14, 1752, 
just about one year from the first refusal, the following 
Hingham record was made: "The Petition of Sam'l 
Cushing Esq'", Messrs Isaac Lincoln the third & Daniel 
Lincoln in behalf of them Selves & the Second Parrish in 
s'^ Town that the s'^ Parrish may be Set off a Seprate Dis- 
trict or Town, Read & the Question put whether the prayer 
of the petition be Granted — passed in the negative." 
Again the matter rested. In the mean while, to secure the 
hearty cooperation of the Beechwood residents, the advo- 
cates of separation made a pledge to back up the Beech- 
wood demand for lands to pay for the land they had 
sacrificed in laying out " Wood " Street through their lots, 
as we mentioned in a previous chapter. 

Once again, November 27, 1752, the walls of the church 
on our Common echoed the determined vote to petition 
the town for separation. A new committee was chosen, 
consisting of Lazarus Beal, Aaron Pratt, and David Bates. 

But this Beechwood alliance was no more successful 
than the former petition. 

On the following March 19, 1753, the original committee 
of three were again appointed to get the plea for separa- 
tion before the General Court at Boston, but there is no 
minute in the records of the General Court that shows 
whether the petition v/as sent to Boston. 



SEPARA TION FR OM HINGHAM. 259 

For three years this agitation had been rife in the pre- 
cinct, and nothing had come of it but disappointments. 
Now for three years the matter was given up. It was not 
wholly given up, however, for the demand was too deeply 
justified in the nature of things to be relinquished very 
long. 

The harbor of this community was separated from the 
other harbor at Hingham by a long fifteen miles — nearly 
as much as from Boston ; and it was much easier on 
account of the winds and tides to go to Boston than to 
the other harbor of our own town. 

Add to this absurdity of keeping two such distant har- 
bors under one town government, the other great difficulty 
of a connection overland. 

The distance was five miles only, but such a five miles 
as wearied both soul and body. The joltings of their two- 
wheeled ox carts were simply terrible. And even if men 
should ride horseback the journey was a tedious one, with 
very few stretches of road where the horse could gallop 
safely. And the Beechwood people had still farther, even 
as many as nine miles to travel, if they went by the old 
cartway to the Hingham town meetings. It is true that 
the Beechwood people had a short cut of four miles to 
the Hingham meeting-house, where the town meetings 
were held ; but that short cut was only a footpath, so that 
all who rode must go the long " nine-mile " way through 
Cohasset. 

Another difficulty was the frequency of their town 
meetings. Nowadays our town meetings occur usually but 
once a year at a time when hours are not so precious to 
laboring men ; but in those days there were sometimes four 
in one year, part of them coming during the busy summer 
or at any other inconvenient time. 

Who could wonder at the grumbling of dwellers in this 
precinct who were unwilling to lose so much time attend- 
ing to the town's business .'' And attend they must, for 



2 6o HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

ordinances that deeply concerned their welfare were being 
passed at any of these town meetings. Furthermore, the 
town treasurer was too inaccessible so far away. To pay 
him one's taxes or for the school committee to receive 
from him the annual grant for schools required a deal of 
traveling, which grew ever more irksome as the precinct 
became populous enough for a town by itself. 

Besides these compulsory trips to Hingham there was 
the necessity for any person intending marriage to travel 
to the clerk in Hingham to announce his intentions legally. 

But what need is there further to specify the difficulties 
suffered by the inhabitants of this precinct in their un- 
fortunate subjection to the mother town } 

After three years of waiting, some of the people much 
discouraged and others indifferent, again the precinct, on 
March 29, 1766, voted its double-barreled petition, one to 
Hingham and the other to the General Court. 

The next May 19, Hingham braced itself against the 
charge. The town " voted to adjourn all articles preced- 
ing that of the East precinct's Petition, untill that was 
Considered. Then the s*^ Petition was Read and after a 
Long debate upon the Subject matter of it, the Question 
was put whether the prayer thereof should be Granted — 
passed in the Negative." That long and exciting debate 
called forth the strongest efforts of our precinct ; but 
their hopes were stunned by that obstinate " Negative " 
vote. 

Not for many years did the loyal advocates of this pre- 
cinct again besiege the town for their independence. 

This defeat apparently discouraged the General Court 
petition, for the records of that court show no sign that 
the petition ever reached it. 

Four years afterwards, on May 27, 1760, the precinct 
recovered enough to vote that its petition be presented to 
the General Court ; but the discouraged ones prevailed^ 
and that vote was withdrawn. 



SEPARA TION FR OM H INGHAM. 2 6 1 

They were just entering into a period of very hard 
times when the struggle for existence was too severe for 
them to undertake the greater responsibilities of town 
government. A year after their last vote the crops were 
nearly a failure, so that in the following spring, May 14, 
1762, the town had to borrow money to buy grain lest the 
people should starve. The vote was as follows : "That 
;j^200 be appropriated to buy Grain for the use of the 
Inhabitants of s'^ Town and that five hundred bushels 
thereof (the due proportion in Each Parrish) be storred 
for the use of the poor and those who shall be hereafter 
in want. And as there is not a surplusage of money now 
in the hand of the Treasurer he is hereby ordered and 
directed to Borrow Said Sum of Two Hundred Pounds 
untill it can be collected by a Tax." 

This grain was to be sold for barely enough to pay for 
"carting" it, for •' waste," for the "trouble of getting it," 
and for "interest on money." No person was allowed 
more than two bushels to each member of his family. 

But these periods of discouragement had to be ended. 
The time came six years later when this precinct gathered 
itself for a final determined wrench from Hingham. The 
accompanying petition* for a precinct meeting was dili- 
gently circulated, and the sixty-four autograph signatures 
were secured. 

Several other towns in the province of Massachusetts 
had already been divided to accommodate the growth of 
enterprising precincts. Accordingly, on January 25, 1768, 
at our precinct meeting it was voted to petition Hingham 
and the General Court for a district charter, " to be in- 
vested with all the Libertys and Privileges of a Town, that 
of sending a Representative to the General Court only 
excepted, and that they have the liberty of joining with 
y^ Town of Hingham in the choice of a Representative 
from time to time." 

* This interesting document was preserved by the care of Elisha Doane. 



262 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



^^T^i^rf-^ /^^,^^n«^ (mt*/LyZ» ji>^Z?Z^^^ ^/^^ ^-. 

a^o^^^^Sf^ <^C^-^^yC^.^ ^— —- — — 













Petition i-ok Precinct Meeting to vote 



SEPARATION FROM HINGHAM. 



26' 












UPON THE Question of becoming a Town, 



2 64 HIS TOR V OF COHASSE T. 

The petition as it was presented to Hingham at their 
March meeting was as follows : — 

The Petition of the Inhabitants of the Second Precinct in 
Hingham, to their beloved Brethren of the same town ; Assembled 
at their annual meeting in March, 1768. 

Humbly Sheweth 

1. First that your Petitioners by reason of the badness of the 
roads together with our distance from the place where Town 
meetings are always held (the most of us living above 5 & many 
6 and 7 and some 9 miles as the Road goes and more than one 
half of us not being furnished with Horses) are in a great measure 
deprived of the Priviledge of having a Voice in the Choice of Ofifi- 
cers and other Afifairs usually transacted at the annual Meeting in 
March. 

2. Secondly that about one tenth part of the Lands within our 
Precinct being owned by our Brethren in other parts of the Town 
are not taxed for the support of our School nor the Mending of 
our Highways which are naturally so rough as to require greater 
expense in Repairs than perhaps all the other roads in the Town. 

3. Thirdly that although we consist of 136 families & our Rate- 
able Polls and Number of Voters are nearly one third part of the 
whole Town vet we are allowed to have but one out of five of the 
Selectmen. 

4. Fourthly that the Monies for Records, Certificates, &c, all 
Entered in the first Precinct, and that the trouble and expense 
of travelling so far to transact such business, are so great as that 
some Necessary Records are Undoubtedly Neglected. 

5. Fifthly that our assembling but one day in the year would 
be sufificient to transact the whole business which now neces- 
sarily requires three meetings to our great expense and loss of 
time. 

Considering these difficulties, it is our earnest request that you 
would from Brotherly Affection toward us, vote that we may be 
set of from you as a seperate and distinct District to do the 
Duties and enjoy the Priviledges of a Town that of joining with 
you in the choice of a Representative Excepted, And that our 
Extent be the same that it was when we were first made a Pre- 



SEPARA TION FR OM HINGHAM. 265 

cinct excepting the Dwelling Houses and Homesteads of the late 
Ebenezer and Daniel Beal and Jeremiah Stodder these to remain 
as they were when set of from us. Moreover that you would con- 
firm to us that part of the Grist Mill at Strait's Pond which is now 
taxed here and also let us still enjoy our right in the Town Pow- 
der House, Arms, Ammunition &c, and allow us the money for 
our part of the Wharfe which we lately joined with you in build- 
ing at the Town Cove. 

We are fully sensible Brethren that it is in your Power & we 
doubt not agreeable to your inclination to remove some of the 
Difficulties beforementioned, but we beg leave to observe that the 
most Material of them are absolutely insuperable, Particularly our 
Distance from the usual place of Town Meetings, the badness 
of the Roads and the Multiplication of our Meetings for the 
Transaction of our present Precinct Business : wherefore suffer us 
to entreat that the prayers of our petition be granted Viz, that 
you will do what in you lies that we may be Incorporated as a 
Seperate District with the above Mentioned Priviledges. 

The Hingham town records for this period are not to 
be found in the town safety vault, so that the disposal of 
this petition may only be guessed. The town appointed 
a committee to meet the General Court in opposition to 
the Cohasset committee. But the petition was already 
storming the citadel with promise of a complete victory. 
In the March meeting of our precinct the committee was 
reappointed to renew its petition to the General Court and 
to "persue the same to the final issue." 

In that summer session of the court, June 30, 1669, 
the persistent petition came up before the higher house of 
legislators in Boston, and was read as follows : — 

To his Excellency Sir Francis Bernard Baronet Capt General 
and Governour in Chief in and Over his Majesty's Province of 
the Massachusetts Bay in New England, to the Honb' Council 
and House of Representatives in General Court Assembled June 
12, 1769 



2 66 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

The Petition of a Committee in behalf of the Inhabitants of 
the Second Precinct of the Town of Hingham humbly Sheweth 

That the Said Inhabitants by Reason of the badness of the 
Roads, the difificulty of the Season and their distance from the 
place where their Town Meetings are always held, the most of 
them living more than five and many Six or Seven and Some 
nine miles as the Road goes are often deprived of the Priviledge 
of having a Voyce in the Afifairs transacted at the Annual Meet- 
ing in March, and they are obliged to Assemble Oftner than 
would be Necessary if they were seperated into a District or 
deprive themselves of the Priviledge ; That they have been de- 
prived of the Tax Raised on a Considerable part of the Real 
Estate within Said Precinct towards the Support of the Schools, 
and also for the Repairs of Highways which are naturally so 
Rough as to require a greater Expence for Repairs than Perhaps 
all the other Roads in the Town. And that they are also Obliged 
(although Consisting of more than One hundred and thirty Fam- 
ilies) to Travel to the Centre of the first Parish for the Banns of 
Matrimony Certificates, Records &c : which is a very great 
Burthen, and that undoubtedly Some necessary Records are neg- 
lected which in time may prove very detrimental and many more 
Difficulties might be mentioned : — Wherefore your Petitioners 
humbly pray that your Excellency and Honors would be pleased 
to Sett off all the Lands lying in Said Precinct into a distinct and 
Seperate District, and that the Inhabitants may be vested with all 
the Privileciges of a Town, that of Sending Representatives to 
the General Assembly only excepted : Notwithstanding that they 
may yet enjoy the Priviledge of joining with the Town in the 
Choice thereof. And that they may also enjoy their Rights in 
the Town Wharfe So called ; and in the Powder House, Arms and 
Ammunition &c, and that they have a Right of Taxing the one 
half of the Grist Mill at Straits pond So Called or Otherwise as 
to your Excellency and Honours Shall Seem meet. 

And we beg leave further to Observe that we presented the 
foregoing Petition in June last and it past both Houses & the 
Town Clerk was serv^ with a Coppy but by Reason of the Dissatis- 
(fac)tion of the General Court the Matter was not brought to an 
Issue : 



SEPARA TION FR OM HINGHAM. 267 

Wherefore we humbly pray that the same may now be Consid- 
ered and Acted upon as to your Excellency and Honours Shall 
Seem meet. 

And your Petitioners as in Duty bound Shall ever pray &c. 

ISAAC LINCOLN Junr 
JOHN STEPHENSON Junr 
LAZs BEAL Junk 

The matter was deferred until the following- March 28, 
1770, when the answer of the Hingham committee ap- 
pointed to prevent the separation was read. 

It was plainly an advantage to Hingham that the Co- 
hasset section be retained on account of the strength of 
numbers and of wealth, which any town needs in the per- 
formance of its domestic ordinances as well as in its larger 
functions of State legislation. 

It was fitting, therefore, that the most eminent political 
leaders of Hingham should be appointed to preserve the 
integrity of the town. 

The following is their noble plea in remonstrance to the 
Cohasset petition : — 

To his Honor Thomas Hutchinson Esq. Lieut. Gov. & Com- 
mander in Chief of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay, the 
HonW his Majesties Council and House of Representatives in 

General Court assembled. 

The Respondants to a Petition of the Second Parish in Hing- 
ham beg leave to observe that your Petitioners in the first place 
say " by Reason of the Badness of the Roads the Difficulty of 
the Season and their distance from the Place where Town Meet- 
ings are alway held the most of them living more than five some 
six or seven and some nine miles as the Road goes are often 
Deprived of the Priviledge of having a voice in the affairs Trans- 
acted at their annual Meeting in March, and that they are 
obliged to assemble Oftener then they would if they were made a 
District " 

As to the Roads, they have been Repaired by the united assist- 
ance of the whole Town and are now very passable and are not 
Difficult to travel in Even with Carriages. 



268 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

As to the Distance from the Place where Our Town Meetings 
are always held it is true the Centre of the Second Parish is 
about five Miles from the Center Meeting House in the Town 
where Town Meetings have been held as the whole was there 
best accomodated being Near y^ Real Centre of the Town and 
such of their People who are at the greatest distance as the Road 
goes (or as the Highway is) are the most Indifferent with respect 
to being set off for the way by them Generally Used to Assemble 
at Town Meetings is but little further then they would have to 
travel if they were made a District. 

The Petitioners say they must assemble oftener while united ; 
this cannot be considered as very Burthen seeing we have, but 
Two Town Meetings in a year unless something very perticular 
Viz. March & May the Latter they ask to Attend and the former 
being at a very Leisure Season of the year. 

"The Petitioners complain that they have been deprived of 
the Tax Raised on a Considerable part of the Real Estate within 
Said Parish Towards the Support of the Schools, Repairs of High- 
ways, &c." With Respect to the Schools the Case is truly this 
for many years past the Inhabitants of Each Parish have been 
allowed to draw out of the Treasury the whole of the money 
Raised for the use of the Schools which they placed therein And 
improve it for the purpose to which it was appropriated in a 
manner they should think best comported with their circum- 
stances while the first Parish have kept the Grammer School 
which by Law the Town is obliged to do and in the country is 
Looked upon as the Burthen the Doors of which have at all 
times been opened to the Grammer scholars of both the other 
parishes by the free and united consent of the whole. 

As to their Roads we are Constrained to observe that we look 
upon the representation given as to y^ Badness of them to be 
greatly Exaggerated by the Petitioners for it is Conceived by 
many that they do not want Greater Expence of repairs yearly 
than an equal proportion with the other Roads in the Town Not- 
withstanding that the Town ever has taken part of the Roads in 
the Second Parish and made them without any of their assist- 
ance, and more lately since the Highway, have been repaired by 
a Tax, the whole they asked for hath been done for them to the 
amount of four or five pounds Lawful Money in a year. 



SEPARA TION FR OM HINGHA M. 269 

The petitioners further Complain that they have to travel to the 
Centre of the First Parish for Banns of Matrimony &c. this we 
leave to operate as it stands seeing the Clerk is chosen by the 
United Suffrages of the whole therefore remaining Quite an un- 
certainty to which parish for y^ future we may be obliged to 
Travel. Upon the whole we humbly submit the Observations by 
us made to the wisdome and Justice of your Honor & Honors 
And if you should think so widely different from us as to Judge 
it Expedient and for the Benefit of this People to Cause a Divi- 
sion of the Town of Hingham which is now supposed to be less 
than five miles square, notwithstanding the many disadvantages 
that must arise thereby to divide old towns for the reasons offered 
by your petitioners, your Respondants must submit to it. 

Should that be the case we beg leave further to Observe as to 
the Bounds they ask for (upon supposition they don't Intend to 
Include a number of Families and their Homesteads which was 
reannexed to the Old Parish a.d. 1747*) their Joining with us in 
Choice of a Representative to the General Court their holding 
their Right in the Powder House Arms & Amunition and the sole 
right of Taxing One half of the Mill at Straights Pond so called 
we acquiesce in ; but as to their Enjoying their Right in the 
Town Wharf we view in a very different light, for it is Built upon 

* Hingham March 2nd 1746-47. Pursuant to the orders of the First and Second 
Parishes in Hingham to run y« Line between ye s^ Precincts Wee, the subscribers 
have proceeded as follovveth — the Dividing Line begins, as by order of the Court, 
at the Bridge on Hingham side, near y* dwelling-house formerly Lazell's at 
Straights Pond, and continues as the rhoad or highway runs from thence unto yc 
hill called Turkey Hill, and from thence we run by the East side of y« Land called 
Turkey Hill Lane over sd Hill South about 5 deg. East and from thence South 
about eleven and % deg. East 1% miles and about 40 rods, to y*^ North-west end 
of y« Line between ye 53 & 54 Lotts in ye second part of ye third Division — by 
a range of Trees and Stakes marked and lettered with a marking iron W weste^d 
& E eastvVd and stones laid about y"' from thence to ye Pattent Line between 
said 53 & 54 Lotts the Course is supposed to be about South 32 or 33 deg. East 
all ye courses above mentioned being by ye needle. , 

JOHN JACOB 
JACOB BEAL 
SOLOMON GUSHING 
ABEL CUSHING 
EBENr BEAL 
STEPHEN STODDER 
Committees of y First &= Second Precincts. 



270 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



a spot of ground of Eight or Ten Rods (the only Spot the Town 
hath at the Cove so calld) which Nature made fit for a Landing 
place and for that purpose it hath been Improved from the first 
Settlement of the Town. Now should they continue to hold 
their right in the same they would enjoy a certain priviledge with- 
out their Bounds while they ask to hold all within. Should they 
ask then that the expense of building be refunded to them we 
say it hath been already, for the Wharf and the landing place 
Afores^ hath let for more money then the Building of it Cost ; 
but if there had been none refunded we should judge the asking 
for it an unreasonable request as the first motion for a Building 
the wharf was to secure the Gristmill adjoining thereto and in 
that they will continue to enjoy their former benefit. 

And we ask that they be held to take their Just Proportion of 
the Public Taxes for the future according to the Last Valuation 
and the same proportion of the present poor, and in case any 
who have now removed from the Town of Hingham and have 
not gained a legal settlement elsewhere should any of them 
return, that they pay their Proportion of that Expence as afore — 
All which is Humbly P. 

JOSHUA HEARSEY 
BENJAMIN LINCOLN Junr 
JOSEPH ANDREWS 
JOSEPH THAXTER 
THEOPH. GUSHING 
Comtnittee of the Town of Hingham to make 
answer to the Second Parish petition 

Hingham March 26th 1770 

These two petitions are remarkably free from personal 
spites and are fairly clear in their statements of the case. 
It will be readily seen that the Hingham argument only 
trimmed a little off from the Cohasset pleas without essen- 
tially weakening them. And, most of all, the desire to be 
a separate town with the manifest ability to take care of 
themselves was an unanswerable argument for separation. 
The espousers of independence were not, however, free 
from opposition in their own precinct, as we shall soon see. 



SEPARATION FROM HINGHAM. 



271 



On that twenty-eighth of March, 1770, the General 
Court, consisting of both Council and House, appointed 
three men, Jonathan Bradbury, Colonel Gerrish, and 
Major Bancroft, who were ordered April ii "to repair to 
Hingham, as soon as may be, vaew the said Parish, and 
report to the Court what in their opinion is proper to be 
done." 

An interesting document of remonstrance was written 
to this committee from a sturdy dweller in Beechwood, 
who seems to have been the only objector with the courage 
to sign his name. 

It reads as follows : — 

To the Honb' John Bradbury Chaireman of Comm. 

We the Subscriber Who are Inhabitants of the Second Parish 
in Hingham & Petitiners that the Same may not be made a 
Destrect, beg Leave to offer the following Reasons for our Dessent- 
ing from the other Part of the Parish, that is 

ist. The Parish is Small 

2 The fishery fails Which is a Considerable Part of our Depend- 
ance 

3 It is Represented to be Nine Miles to Tend Publick Meet- 
ings. We are the Parley and by going four we Cann attend metings 
for it is that Dist to our own Meeting house 

4 We have been att the charge of bulding a \Vharfe and Pow- 
der house in s'' Town. 

5. We are Threatened that we Shall not Draw our Proportion 
of the School money, as has been for years Past by Reason the 
Inhabitants Living So Scattering that Small Children may Have the 
benefit of Schools 

6. It is our minds that Halfe the Parish would Chuse to Con- 
tinue as we are 

7. And We are Pers waded that it will Create Charge Which our 
Present Circumstances will not admit of. 

8. We ar apprehensive it is only Push^ by Designing men 

9. We understand it is Represented that what we have Done is 
out of Spite which is altogather Groundless. Where as we only 
mean the good of the Parish. 



272 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

10 It is Represented to be Chargable to attend Publick meet- 
ings att Such a Distance Which we think would Cost as much att 
our Parish Considering the kindness of the Towns people. 

II. Where as their has been Complaint made about School 
money, by Reason of their Lands Lying in our Parish, for Which 
they have always Kept the Grammar School & it is thought by our 
Principal men that if we are set of, we should Not Raise So much 
money as is allowed by the Town. 

'"peSnfr^l JOSEPH SOUTHER 

HiNGHAM April 6. 1770 

The committee was entertained at Lazarus Beal's, and 
the court charged the expense of the committee, £,^ 
lys. lod., to the whole town. 

April 25, 1770, upon the return of the committee, the 
petitioners* were given liberty to frame a bill for incorpo- 
rating themselves into a separate district. 

The next day, April 26, 1770, the following charter, 
which had been carefully prepared, was made a legislative 
document for the foundation of our town : — 

THE PROVINCE OF THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY. 



■^^EAI^^ 



ANNO ^^^Sw REGNI REGIS 

. •^SEAL^' 
GEORGII TERTII ^Sl .^^ DECIMO. 



An Acrr for incorporating the second Precinct in Hingham into 
a District, by the name of Cohasset. 

Whereas the Inhabitants of the second Precinct in Hingham 
labor under many difificulties and inconveniences by reason of 
their not being incorporated into a District. 

Be it enacted by the Lieutenant Governor, Council and House 
of Representatives, that the inhabitants and lands within the 
present bounds of the second Precinct in the Town of Hingham 
(excepting a number of families and their Homesteads which 
were reannexed to the first Precinct in said Town in the year one 

*The cost of all this petitioning was;^ii2 2^. lod. old tenor, and it was ordered 
paid in 1770 after he district got into running order. 



SEPARATION FROM HINGHAM. 273 

thousand seven hundred & forty seven) be and hereby are incor- 
porated into a District, by the name of Cohasset ; and that the 
inhabitants thereof be and hereby are invested with all the 
powers, privileges, and immunities which the inhabitants of Towns 
within this Province do, or by law ought to enjoy (that of sending 
a Representative to the general assembly only excepted) and that 
the inhabitants of said District shall have liberty, from time to 
time, to join with the Town of Hingham in the choice of a Repre- 
sentative or Representatives, which Representative or Representa- 
tives may be chosen indifferently from said Town or District, the 
pay or allowance of such Representative or Representatives to be 
borne by the said Town or District, according to their respective 
proportions of the Province Tax and that the Town of Hingham 
as often as they shall call a meeting for the choice of Representa- 
tives, shall from time to time give seasonable notice to the Clerk 
of said District of Cohasset for the time being, of the time and 
place for holding said meeting, to the end that the said District 
may join therein, and the Clerk of said District shall set up in 
some public place in said District, a notification thereof accord- 
ingly. Aiid be it further enacted, that the said District shall have 
the privilege of taxing that part of the Grist Mill at Strait Pond 
so called which has usually been taxed by the town of Hingham, 
and that the said District shall have their proportion of the 
Powder House, or the value of the same, also of the Town's 
stock of arms and ammunition ; to be adjusted by the rule of 
their pay to the Province tax set on said Town of Hingham. 

And be it further enacted. That the inhabitants of said District 
shall take to themselves & hereafter support their just proportion 
of all such poor persons as are now wholly supported by said 
town of Hingham, and also their proportion of all such poor 
persons as now have a settlement in the Town of Hingham, but 
dwell in other places, whom the said Town of Hingham may 
hereafter be obliged by law to support ; and that the inhabitants 
of said District shall pay all Province, County, & Town assess- 
ments, now set or assessed on them, as if they had remained to 
said Town of Hingham. 

And be it further enacted, that Benjamin Lincoln Esq' be, 
and hereby is empowered to issue a warrant to some principal 



2 74 ^^^ "^^^ ^ ^^ COHASSE T. 

inhabitants of said District of Cohasset, requiring him to call a 
meeting of said inhabitants, in order to choose such ofificers as 
towns are by law empowered to choose in the month of March 
annually; and at said meeting such persons, inhabitants in said 
District shall be allowed to vote, and only such, as would have 
been allowed to vote in the choice of town officers in the said 
Town of Hingham if this act had not been made. 

April 26th, 1770 — This bill having been read three Several 
times in the House of Representatives, passed to be enacted. 

THOMAS GUSHING, Speaker. 

April 26, 1770 — This bill having been read three several times 
in the council — passed to be enacted. 

A. OLIVER, Secy. 

April 26, 1770. By the Lieutenant Governor I consent to the 
enacting of this Bill. 

J. HUTCHINSON. 
A true copy. 

Attest, ALDEN BRADFORD, 

Secy of the Covimonwealth of MassacJuisetts. 

Pursuant to this legislative act, Benjamin Lincoln gave 
notice immediately for a meeting to be held in the Co- 
hasset meeting-house on the Common. 

The sturdy citizens met gladly on May 7, 1770. The 
work of twenty years was accomplished. Just one hun- 
dred years had passed since the lands were divided, fifty- 
three years had rolled along since they had become a 
precinct, and now was held on the seventh day of May, 
1770, their first town meeting in the church on the Com- 
mon, with the man for moderator who had borne the brunt 
of the fight. Deacon Isaac Lincoln. 

Although technically only a district, it is plain that we 
were practically a town. In fact, the Legislature so inter- 
preted the matter officially when in the year 1786 they 
passed the general act that all districts incorporated be- 
fore 1777 should be towns. 



SEPARA TION FROM HINGHAM. 



275 



The list of Cohasset taxpayers for the year 1 771 — the first after 
the town's i?icorporation — showing valuation of real estate in 
pounds and shillings. Names given in original order and spelling. 

£ s. 

Samuel Gushing 171 12 

Thomas Lothrop 383 2 

Thomas Pratt ...... 236 14 

Solomon Gushing 16 10 

Gushing Kilby 27 c 

James Stodder 61 16 

Philip James 115 4 

Micah Nichols 27 12 

Israel Nichols 7 10 

Mordecai Bates 9 o 

Joshua Beal 6 o 

Adam Beal 15 o 

Galeb Joy 918 

Ebenezer Orcutt 918 

William Bailey 43 4 

Thomas Bourn 38 14 

Elijah James 9 o 

Beza Gushing 6 o 

Thomas Lincoln 140 14 

John Pritchart 15 o 

Richard Tower 8 8 

Oliver Pritchart 9 o 

Urian Oakes 99 18 

Abel Kent 59 8 

Thomas Stevenson 50 2 

Noah Marble 22 16 

Luther Stephenson 10 10 

John Kilby 18 o 

David Marble 18 o 

Jesse Stephenson 54 6 

Benjamin Jacobs 618 

Solon Stephenson 11 8 

Edward Amos 6 12 

Widow Abigail Neal .... 7 10 

Sam'l Gushing, Jr 7 10 

Aaron [Pratt] 272 o 

John Stephenson 88 4 

Jerome Stephenson .... 88 4 

Lusitanus Stephenson ... 33 6 

Ignatius Orcutt 114 6 

Abner Bates 24 6 

David Marble, Jr 9 o 

Obadiah Lincoln 41 8 

Solomon Bate 60 o 

Edward Battles 29 8 

Seth Gannett 9 o 



£ 

Deacon Isaac Lincoln . . . 297 

Mordecai Lincoln ..... 92 

Jacob Lincoln 183 

Abraham Lincoln 89 

Galeb Lincoln 7 

Jesse Willcutt 67 

Nathaniel Bate 38 

John Wheelwright .... 24 

Widow Abigail Bate .... 9 

Deacon Joy 40 

John Willcutt 72 

Ephraim Battles 6 

Joshua Bate 108 

Joseph Souther 42 

Elisha Bate 52 

John Pratt 401 

Joseph Souther, Jr 7 

Israel Whitcomb 45 

Job Whitcomb 45 

Joseph Whitcomb 45 

Lot Whitcomb 45 

Jonathan Pratt 67 

James Litchfield 9 

Simeon Stodder 52 

Seth Merritt 18 

*Jacob Gushing 11 

♦Thomas Loring 72 

♦Gornelius Barns 5 

*Isaiah Gushing 16 

♦Deacon Benjamin [Gushing] 16 

♦Joseph Gushing 16 

♦Ebenezer Lincoln 24 

♦John Fearing 39 

♦John Burr 6 

♦Joseph Mansfield 4 

♦Elisha Burr 26 

♦John Leavitt 27 

♦Joshua Leavitt 30 

♦Jonathan Burr 29 

♦Samuel Burr 30 

♦Thomas Burr 

♦Stephen Gushing 6 

♦Peter Gushing 49 

♦Jacob Sprague 5 

♦Acten Tower 18 

♦Deacon Theoph. Gushing . . 38 



16 



18 



16 



76 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Jonathan Beal 113 2 

Obadiah Beal 12 o 

Widow Anna Humphrys . . 93 18 

Joseph Hudson 36 14 

Abel Beal 27 o 

Hezekiah Hudson 19 10 

Joseph Hudson, Jr 14 2 

Matthew Stodder 612 

Noah Nichols 74 8 

Ephraim I.incoln ill 12 

Catharine Nichols 122 2 

Jazaniah Nichols 221 2 

Thomas Nichols 72 18 

John Tower i 10 

Daniel Souther 48 o 

Ebenezer Lane 69 o 

Daniel Nichols 60 12 

Widow Martha Leavitt ... 90 

Job Tower 217 10 

Benjamin Beal 9 o 

Abner Joy 19 10 

Gideon Hayward 9 o 

Samuel Bate, Jr 21 12 

Stephen Stodder 121 16 

Isaac Tower 9 o 

James Hall 18 o 

Daniel Tower, Jr 213 18 

Samuel Bate 146 2 

Joseph Bate 40 16 

Joseph Willcutt 47 8 

Sarah Phillips 17 8 

Thomas Beal .... . . 100 16 

Hezekiah Lincoln 192 12 

Ezekiel Lincoln 12 o 



£ 

Elisha Lincoln 149 

Luke Orcutt 13 

Lazarus Beal, Jr 102 

Hezekiah Warrick i 

Isaac Burr 19 

John Beal 141 

Joshua Burr 121 

Timothy Gushing 9 

Thomas James 105 

Jonathan Bate 23 

Joseph Battles 9 

John Burbanks 17 

Widow Joanna Tower ... 20 

Jesse Warrick 6 

*Benjamin Lincoln, Esq. . . 59 

*Deacon Andrews 56 

* Joseph Andrews 89 

*Joshua Barker 6 

*Eiisha Leavitt ...... 96 

*Elias Magoon 21 

*Jedaiah Lincoln 40 

*Gaptain Francis Barker ... 12 

*Enoch Lincoln 5 

♦Elijah Fearing i 

*Stephen Lincoln 31 

*George Lane 47 

*Deacon Josiah Lincoln ... 33 
*Widow Elsie Hersey .... 19 

*Jacob Hersey 19 

♦Matthew Lincoln 62 

John Beal, Jr 40 

Ebenezer Beal 15 

Jeremiah Stodder 56 

Pompey Bremes (negro?) . . 7 



8 12 



6 
14 



14 

14 



I have starred the names of those who were probably Hingham residents own- 
ing real estate in Cohasset. They come at the ends of the first and second bills. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 

THE independence of this community from its mother 
town had been gained only five years before that 
greater independence of the American colonies from their 
mother nation was begun. In that mighty revolt against 
a foreign tyrant the town of Cohasset bore a humble 
part. In the blood of our citizens who were slain, and in 
the hard-earned money we poured into the war, was a 
pledge of our devotion fully commensurate with our 
strength. The hardships of war had already been learned 
by some of our citizens, for, during the wars between 
France and England in America, many Cohasset young 
men had borne arms for the king of England. 

The famous capture of Louisburg, that massive French 
fort upon the island of Cape Breton, on June 17, 1745, 
was no doubt participated in by one or more men from 
Cohasset. 

The rolls of New England troops of that expedition 
have been lost from the State archives, but John Stephen- 
son, who afterwards married Nathaniel Nichols' daughter, 
was on the payroll for assisting in "wooding the garrison." 

Another young man who was present at that " glorious 
victory " is Ebenezer Beal, of North Cohasset, for that 
name occurs upon the list of men who volunteered to 
storm the Island Battery in the harbor of Louisburg. 

A third is John Wheelwright,* afterwards the tanner of 
Beechwood, whose old bayonet used at Louisburg is now 
in the possession of Edward Wheelwright, of Boston. 

* He enlisted in 1745 at twenty-six years of age under Pepperell as a private in 
the 7th Massachusetts Regiment, Shubael Gorham colonel, 4th company, Elisha 
Doane captain. November 20, 1745, ^^ '^'^^ '" one of" the 3 Companies that Doe 
Duty in the town." (See the original Pepperell Papers, Massachusetts Historical 
Society, Vol. U, p. 51.) 



278 HIS TOR Y OF COHASSE T. 

Francis Parkman's thrilling history of the romantic 
exploit of Louisburg belongs therefore partly to us. If 
there were no other soldiers from this community, the 
whole precinct nevertheless participated in the victory ; 
for the increased provincial taxes to carry on Governor 
Shirley's patriotic ventures were paid by all. 

For ten years after this Louisburg expedition nothing 
called forth our soldiers until the troublesome French 
Acadians in Nova Scotia were to be banished in 1755. 
One Cohasset soldier was Gideon Hayward, who happens 
to be mentioned by Colonel Lincoln in 1759 as having 
been with him in the Nova Scotia expedition of 1755. 
Another is Robert Tower, who died in the army Septem- 
ber 18, 1756, aged twenty-one, the grandson of Hezekiah 
Tower. But not until the year 1757 did the first strong 
excitement of war sweep through our precinct. 

It was when the French army of eight thousand men 
was marching upon Fort William Henry of northern New 
York held by only twenty-two hundred English soldiers. 
General Webb at Fort Edward in his frenzy sent for 
reinforcements, and among the hundreds who quickly 
responded from Massachusetts were no less than twenty 
men from Cohasset. The whole precinct had only one 
hundred and fifty men in it that year, and the excitement 
must have been intense to have taken so many. The 
captain of one of the companies was Ebenezer Beal, 
about fifty-six years of age, who had already gained ex- 
perience at Louisburg twelve years before. He kept the 
Black Horse Tavern at North Cohasset, where curses 
upon the French were frequently enough aired in the 
hearing of those who stopped on their way to and fro. 

The first lieutenant of the company was Daniel Lincoln, 
some thirty-eight years old. The fourth sergeant was 
Obadiah Lincoln, and the third corporal Elisha Tower, 
Jr., both twenty-nine years of age. 

The following privates, with their ages as nearly as can 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



279 



be ascertained, have been picked out of the list of the 
company, which includes many from the two other pre- 
cincts of the town : — 



John Wheelwright . 


• 37 


Micah Nichols . . 


. . 20 


Job Tower . . . 


• 31 


Simeon Bates . . 


. . 19 


John Pratt . . . 


. 29 


Ignatius Orcutt . . 


. . 19 


Calvin Gushing . . 


. 26 


Hosea Orcutt . . 


. . 18 


Jacob Beal . , . 


. 22 


Frederic Bates . . 


. . 18 


Price Pritchart . . 


. 20 







In another company Noah Nichols was first corporal, 
and the following from Cohasset were privates : — 



Thomas Lothrop 
Uriah Oakes . . 



19 

28 



Caleb Joy . 
Obadiah Beal 



26 

27 



Some Hingham soldiers had already gone to the front 
and were in danger of being annihilated by the over- 
whelming army of French and Indians about Lake 
George. It was partly the hope of rescuing these friends 
or at least of gaining a soldier's revenge that mustered 
out twenty young men from this little precinct of one 
hundred and fifty. 

The oldest of the privates was only thirty-one and the 
youngest was eighteen, so that between these ages there 
could not have been left in town a dozen men. 

They started the march on the fifteenth of August, 
1757; but the purpose of the expedition was dead before 
they started. Fort William Henry had already surren- 
dered, after a brave resistance, on August 9 ; and on the 
next day fell that savage butchery of helpless captives 
that usually attended the victories of the French with 
their Indian allies. The relief expedition was therefore 
of no avail. In eight days after leaving they returned to 
their homes. 

But the war was not ended, and this taste of army life 
was for some the beginning of a soldier's career. 



2 8o 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



The next year, 1758, a more serious enlistment was 
made for the prosecution of the war that resulted in the 
capture of all Canada, and the final termination of French 
control in the colonies. The Cohasset men who enlisted 
in this year were, with their ages : — 



Shadrach Tower 


• • 37 


Micah Nichols . . 


. 21 


Calvin Cushing . . 


. . 27 


Thomas Lothrop 


. 20 


Oliver Southward 


. (?)24 


Mordica Bates . . 


20 


Solon Stephenson 


. . 24 


David Bates . . . 


. 20 


Nathaniel Bates . . 


. . 34 


Jerome Stephenson . 


. 20 


Abner Bates . . . 


• • 23 


Joseph Battles, Jr. . 


. 18 



These were all privates under Captain Edward Ward, of 
Hingham, and their fellow soldiers were thirty-seven more 
townsmen from the two other precincts. 

These, and probably others in other companies, lists of 
which are imperfect or wholly lost, maneuvered in New 
York State and on the border of Canada during that sum- 
mer of 1758, when Bradstreet captured Fort Frontenac 
on Lake Ontario with his army of provincials. 

One of our men, of whose presence under Bradstreet 
in that campaign we are certain, was Thomas Lothrop, a 
private then, but in later years in the Revolutionary War 
a colonel. Again we claim in this part of Parkman's thrill- 
ing history of "Montcalm and Wolfe" a fair degree of 
ownership. 

Following that campaign in the West was another under- 
taken in the region of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia 
in the year 1759. During all that summer Captain Jotham 
Gay's company of Hingham men was stationed at the garri- 
son in Halifax. The pastor of the Cohasset church. Rev. 
John Brown, was stationed at Halifax as chaplain in the 
army, and the following fragment of a letter to him from 
Rev. Ebenezer Gay, the Hingham pastor and the father of 
Captain Jotham Gay, is full of living interest. The date is 
June 25, 1759 : " I wish you may visit Jotham and minister 



THE RE VOL U TIONAR Y WAR. 2 8 I 

good instruction to him and company, and furnish him with 
suitable sermons in print, or in your own very legible if not 
very intelligible manuscripts to read to his men, who are 
without a preacher ; in the room of one, constitute Jotham 
curate/' 

This warlike minister, Rev. John Brown, we shall notice 
again soon. 

The second lieutenant of the company was Thomas 
Lothrop, just twenty-one years of age. Other Cohasset 
men in the company were : — 

Luther Stephenson ... 29 Micah Nichols .... 22 

Calvin Gushing .... 28 Jerome Stephenson . .21 

Lusitanus Stephenson . . 27 Charles Ripley . . . .(?) 

Gideon Hayward . . .(?) Micah Humphrey ... 18 

In all these various expeditions of New England yeo- 
men, the English authority in North America was rapidly 
forcing Frenchmen to the wall. The "total reduction of 
Canada" to British control was their maxim, and it was 
wholly accomplished after Wolfe's marvelous capture of 
Quebec, when in the year 1760 Montreal, the last strong- 
hold of the French, surrendered. 

But the victories of the British carried the seeds of 
future failure of her authority in the American colonies. 
In the first place it gave her an overweening sense of her 
rights in the new country that soon degenerated into 
tyranny ; and in the second place it developed an army in 
these colonies so self-sufficient that when the time came 
to declare our independence, there was brawn and bravery 
enough to fight out our claim. The storm of the Revolu- 
tion began to gather within two years of the fall of Mont- 
real. The brilliant orator James Otis, of Boston, in the 
year 1762 made the walls of the Massachusetts capitol 
echo with these startling words : " It would be of little 
consequence to the people whether they were subject to 
George or Louis, the king of Great Britain or the French 



282 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



king, if both were arbitrary, as both would be, if both could 
levy taxes without Parliament." A cry of "treason" 
greeted this bold statement ; but it was the sort of treason 
that many patriots were beginning to feel over the tyran- 
nical methods of King George's taxation of our colonies. 
Then came the Stamp Act with its threat of compelling 
free American subjects of the king to pay taxes on legal 
documents as no other subjects of that king were com- 
pelled to do. In defense of the rights of Americans the 
great William Pitt hastened from a sick bed to Parliament, 
where his mighty bursts of eloquence glorified American 
resistance and accomplished the repeal of the odious Stamp 
Act in the year 1766. 

At that time we were only a precinct with a population 
of less than one hundred and sixty voters, but these polit- 
ical events excited the whole community. 

Some one, perhaps many, owned a bronze medal struck 
off in honor of William Pitt with this fond inscription: 
" The man who having saved the parent pleaded with 
success for her children." One of these was found a few 
years ago, buried some four feet underground, in laying our 
water pipes near the creek at the head of the Cove, 
evidently lost there at the time when the roadway was filled 
in upon the marsh at the creek. The love for the great 
Earl of Chatham, which throbbed then in the hearts of 
Cohasseters, may be guessed from this bronze token. 




HE MAN^ 
WHO HAVING 
SAVED THE 
PARENT PLEADE] 
WITH SUCCESS; 
FOR HER 
.CH I LDKEl 



William Pitt Medal — 1766. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 283 

But the time for more sturdy patriotism was yet to 
come. During the ten years of excitement in Boston pre- 
ceding the outbreak of war some of our young men, who 
were learning their trades of shipbuilding or of what else in 
that town, were fast developing their sentiments of rebellion. 
But no specific deed of historic interest was participated in 
by us until the memorable Tea Party of December 16, 1773. 
On that occasion, which the historian John Fiske calls 
"one of the most momentous days in the history of the 
world," three of our young men were active participants. 
We all have read of that whole day mass meeting in the 
Old South Church, Boston, where a throng of seven thou- 
sand men on the streets and indoors struggled to keep 
down their anger while they discussed the means of pro- 
tecting themselves from the tyranny of King George. 
They were determined not to allow the Dartmouth to 
land her cargo of tea with its odious tax ; but they had 
tried in vain every lawful means of defense. 

It had now grown dark and the church was dimly lighted 
with candles. Amid profound stillness Samuel Adams arose and 
said, quietly but distinctly, " This meeting can do nothing more 
to save the country." It was the declaration of war ; the law had 
shown itself unequal to the occasion, and nothing now remained 
but a direct appeal to force. 

Scarcely had the watchword left his mouth when a war whoop 
answered from outside the door, and fifty men in the guise of 
Mohawk Indians passed quickly by the entrance and hastened to 
Griffin's Wharf. Before the nine o'clock bell rang, the three 
hundred and forty-two chests of tea laden upon three ships had 
been cut open and their contents emptied into the sea. Not a 
person was harmed, no other property was injured ; and the vast 
crowd, looking upon the scene from the wharf in the clear frosty 
moonlight, was so still that the click of the hatchets could be 
distinctly heard. Next morning, the salted tea, driven by wind 
and wave, lay in long rows on Dorchester beach, while Paul 
Revere, booted and spurred, was riding posthaste to Philadelphia, 



284 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

with the glorious news that Boston had at last thrown down the 
gauntlet for the king of England to pick up.* 

It is no small honor that three of our young men were 
among those who boarded the vessels in that last manly 
endeavor to maintain the bulwarks of fundamental human 
justice. 

The oldest was Jared Joy, of Beechwood, then twenty- 
four years of age and afterwards a soldier of the Revolu- 
tion. His tombstone in the Beechwood Cemetery, where 
he was buried in his forty-third year, receives annual 
decoration at the hands of the Grand Army. 

The second was Abraham Tower, twenty years of age, 
the grandfather of our present town treasurer, and after 
the Revolution owner of a large commerce at the Cove. 

The third was James Stoddard, a lad of seventeen, 
afterwards " major " in the local militia. The bits of tea 
which lodged in his clothing and shoes were scattered 
upon the floor at his boarding house in Boston the next 
morning, and caused him no little alarm lest he might be 
discovered and punished. But honor and not punishment 
is now measured to all three of these Cohasset boys. 

However, the wrath of English officials was to be 
poured out upon Boston. The next April, 1774, General 
Gage was commissioned to take control of the Common- 
wealth and to annul the charter of rights. On the first 
day of June he was to close the port of Boston and thus 
he was to starve the citizens into obedience. 

The growth of patriotism that summer was rapid and 
strong. Contributions of cattle, sheep, corn, vegetables, 
and fish came pouring into Boston from all the neighbor- 
ing and distant towns where sympathizers abounded. 

The Correspondence Committee recommended the or- 
ganization of a provincial congress to meet in a safe 
place and to plan for self-protection. Deacon Isaac 

* John Fiske's ."Xmerican Revolution, Vol. I, p. go. 
i 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 285 

Lincoln was appointed by us at a meeting in the church 
on our Common, October 7, 1774, to represent us in that 
provincial congress to be held at Concord.* 

At this same meeting it was voted "to have a Closet 
built in sum proper place in the Meeting-house for to 
deposite the District stock of Ammunition in, and the 
Selectmen be a Committee to se it done." 

This hiding place of the munitions of war reminds us 
of the Concord people, whose hidden stores brought 
British soldiers to that town only a few months later to 
shed the first blood of the war. 

The day following Christmas another town (or district) 
meeting was held and a Committee of Inspection was 
chosen to be on the watch for the town's defense. They 
were : — 

Jesse Stephenson. Thomas Lothrop. 

Daniel Nichols. James Hall, 

Samuel Bates. Thomas Bourne. 

Joshua Bates. Jerome Stephenson. 

Deacon Isaac Lincoln. Abel Kent. 
Urian Oakes. 

In order that any citizens opposed f to the patriots' 
cause might be detected and disposed of, a subscription 
paper was drafted to be signed by all freeholders that 
approved of the Continental Association, then forming 
throughout the colonies for their common protection 
against the invading army of the king. 

Thus from that moment our governmental allegiance 
was transferred away from the appointees of the king of 
England to an independent congress of our own choosing. 
The taxes of that year were ordered by a vote of the town, 

* He was allowed 2 shillings per day for 32I4 days and 12 shillings for his horse. 

tThe doctor of the town was a Tory, Dr. Lazarus Beal, living on North Main 
Street near what is now the King Street station at the Spaulding Farm. The 
patriots had some trouble with him and went so far, says tradition, as to confiscate 
his property. His oldest daughter many years afterwards married Dr. Lyman 
Beecher as the stepmother of the famous Henry Ward Beecher. 



286 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

January 5, 1775, to be paid, not to the king's treasurer, but 
to the patriots' provincial treasurer, Henry Gardner, Esq., 
of Stow, a little town west of Concord. At Concord the 
provincial congress was to be held on the twenty-second 
day of March, and Cohasset with Hingham appointed 
Col. Benjamin Lincoln to represent them. This man 
afterwards became a famous general of the American army 
under Washington, and received the sword of Cornwallis 
at Yorktown at the close of the war. 

The battle of Concord and Lexington on April 19, 1775, 
exploded the pent-up fury of a myriad of yeomen through- 
out the colonies. 

When the news reached Cohasset nearly every* man in 
the town able to bear arms was ready to spring into battle. 
Thomas Lothrop, who had already served in the province 
wars with a lieutenant's rank, hastened to the scene of 
bloodshed, where he was soon commissioned a major. 

Of others who seized this first opportunity for martial 
promotion was probably James Hall, who afterwards be- 
came an aid to General Washington. 

There were doubtless other young men who did not 
wait for the formation of a company to march, but started 
at once for the seat of war, because they had no family 
responsibilities to keep them at home. 

The whole town was trembling with excitement, and a 
town meeting was immediately called to convene on the 
twenty-eighth day of the month. They voted to lay in 
a stock of corn — five hundred bushels — because food 
might soon be sadly needed if the war should rage. They 
also voted to buy one hundredweight of gunpowder, and 
five hundred flints for the old flintlock guns which had 
been used by the militia of the town since the beginning. 

The men who swarmed about the church that day on 
the Common may be imagined from the muster roll of 
men enlisted within a few days. 

* The total number of white persons in the town that year was 754. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



287 



Captain Job Gushing was getting the Cohasset militia 
into shape for marching as fast as it could be done. His 
lieutenant was Nathaniel Nichols, of Jerusalem Road, a 
young man of twenty-six years. His other officers and 
privates, making in all a company of fifty-six men, were as 
follows. Among them were Gideon Hayward, who had 
served against the French seventeen years before, and 
Jared Joy and James Stoddard of the Tea Party : — 

MUSTER ROLL OF COMPANY UNDER CAPTAIN JOB 



CUSHLNG, COLONEL GREATON 
COHASSET, AUGUST r 



*Job Gushing, Captain, May 16 
*Nath'l Nichols, Lieutenant, May 16 
*Josiah Oakes, Ensign 

Eleazer James, Sergeant, May 18 . 

Gideon Howard, Sergeant, June i 

Isaac Burr, Sergeant, May 16 . . 

Peter Nichols, Sergeant, May 16 . 

Abraham Tower, Corporal . . . 

Adna Bates, Corporal. 

James Bates, Corporal. 

Bela Nichols, Corporal. 

Levi Tower, Drummer. 

William Stodder, Fifer. 

Elisha Bates, Private. 

Jonathan Bates, 

Josiah Bates, 



Zealous Bates, 
Ephraim Battles, 
Jared Battles, 
Joshua Beal, 
Samuel Beal, 
Amos Brown, 
Calvin Gushing, 
Obed Dunbar, 



S REGIMENT. 
1775- t 
da. 

21 
21 



m. 



21 



19 



19 



16 
I I 

9 
4 
3 
4 
4 
3 



o 

o 

12 

o 

4 
12 
12 
II 



'^Geo. Humphrey, Private. 

Benjamin Jacob, „ 
Jared Joy, 

Melzer Joy, „ 

John Kilby, „ 

•^Jno. Kilby, Jr., „ 

Galen Lincoln, „ 

Jerom Lincoln, „ 

Charles Luneaud, „ 

Joseph Neal, „ 

Daniel Nichols, „ 

Caleb Nichols, „ 

Ebenezer Orcutt, „ 

Ephraim Orcutt, „ 

Luke Orcutt, „ 

Haugh Oakes, „ 



t Revolutionary Rolls, Vol. XIV, p. 53. 



288 HISTORY OF CON ASSET. 

Samuel Oakes, Private. Joseph Souther, Private. 

Joshua Oakes, „ James Stodder „ 

Caleb Pratt, „ Benjamin Stutson, „ 

Oliver Pritchard, „ Reuben Thorn, „ 

Richard Prichard, „ Jesse Tower, ,, 

Elisha Stephenson, ,, Isaac Tower, „ 

Luke Stephenson, „ Jesse Warrick, „ 

John Sutton, „ Gershom Wheelwright, „ 

All served time from 2 months 5 days to 2 months 21 days. 
All but starred ones took advance pay of ^£2. Pay ranged 
according to time. Average pay for private, ^,^3 los. 

While this company was being enlisted there were crises 
in more than one family. Sons eager for a taste of war- 
fare were straining parental authority to the last notch, 
wishing to go in spite of their parents' disapproval. 

Some of the cynical sort scoffed at the enthusiasm of 
patriots. When on one occasion the pastor, John Brown, 
urged men to enlist, one of these cynics taunted him upon 
urging others to do what he himself dared not do ; but the 
warlike preacher raised his cane and threatened to thrash 
the "old Tory " who insulted him. This pastor who had 
been a chaplain in the army at Halifax seventeen years be- 
fore, now marched out at the music of drum and fife with 
the Cohasset soldiers, and tradition points out the old elm 
tree near the boundary in Hingham where he preached 
his patriotic sermon to the volunteer soldiers. 

This first company of Cohasset soldiers were quartered 
probably in Roxbury at the fort upon the hill, making the 
extreme right of the American lines. They were part of 
that motley crowd of sixteen thousand patriots bent on 
pushing the British army of ten thousand drilled troops 
out of Boston. George Washington had not yet been 
made general of the army, and a confusion of military 
methods and military authority prevailed. The British 
general. Gage, issued a proclamation threatening with the 
gallows all citizens captured bearing arms. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 289 

In reply to this, four days afterwards, on the sixteenth 
of June, twelve hundred men marched under Colonel 
Prescott to Bunker Hill and Breed's Hill in Charlestown, 
intending to plant their heavy guns upon these heights 
and to worry the British out of their metropolis. 

Several Cohasset * men were among them, and in that 
famous battle of Bunker Hill the next morning, June 17, 
they helped to withstand those three furious assaults 
of British regulars, and poured hot shot into the gleam- 
ing redcoats. The situation of the patriots in receiving 
the last charge when their ammunition gave out was piti- 
ful in the extreme. It was one of our Cohasset men, 
Joseph Bates, who stood his ground while the British were 
pouring over the barricade, and when he no longer had 
anything to shoot he seized stones and hurled them at the 
enemy in his desperate helplessness. The belief in the 
minds of some Englishmen that Americans could not or 
would not fight was that day dispelled forever.f 

In a few days, July 2, 1775, General Washington took 
charge of the patriot army under the old elm in Cam- 
bridge. 

Soldiers had to be drilled, the commissary department 
had to be organized, and an efficient body of staff officers 
had to be trained to aid the general in his command of 
the army. 

Cohasset may have had something to do with furnish- 
ing food for this army, for in the town records at the close 
of the war, March 11, 1782, there was a vote not to pay 
a certain "committee for purchasing and driving beef to 
Roxburyo" 

One of the times at which Cohasset served in supply- 
ing food for Washington's army is well assured. It was 
in the year 1775 during the month of August; one hun- 

* Besides Joseph Bates was Isaac Tower (not in the line of Ibrook). 

t Alexander Williams, of Beach Street, remembers stories told by Aunt Betsey 
Briggs about her going up on top of the hills to listen to the firing at the battle of 
Bunker Hill. 



290 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

dred barrels of flour, brought in a coaster from New 
York to the head of Buzzard's Bay, were taken overland 
from Manomet to Scusset River and thence in boats to 
Plymouth. The next morning the whaleboats loaded with 
flour were rowed cautiously up the shore for fear of the 
enemy's ships to Cohasset Harbor, where they landed at 
five o'clock in the afternoon. Carts were procured and the 
precious food stuff was hauled overland to Washington's 
camp.* 

Another piece of blockade running at this period of the 
war is credited to a Cohasset heroine, Persis (Tower) Lin- 
coln. She was the daughter of another heroine of whom 
we shall speak, Mrs. Daniel Tower, nicknamed " Resolu- 
tion " Tower, because of her indomitable disposition, Per- 
sis had been married to Allen Lincoln, November 23, 1775, 
and they lived on Elm Street, where the Osgood School 
ground now is. Allen Lincoln was a seaman, and tradi- 
tion says that he was taken from a vessel which the Brit- 
ish captured and was carried to England, where he was 
placed in Dartmoor prison, from which he never returned. 
The wife of this absent seaman knew how to sail a boat 
and was not afraid of the sea. In that year when Boston 
was besieged by our soldiers on land and when the harbor 
was filled with British vessels, it is said that Persis did 
the work of our absent men by sailing one of our vessels 
across the bay to Gloucester to get supplies that could not 
be had in the blockaded port of Boston. This daring 
deed makes her properly a Revolutionary heroine ; and it 
was fitting that after the war was ended, which had made 
her a widow, she should marry, 1786, the gallant Captain 
James Hall. 

While the soldiers were in active service upon the field 
of war, the townsmen who were left at home did their 
share in adjusting the country to an independent govern- 
ment. A Committee of Correspondence was chosen on 

* See Pilgrim Republic, Goodwin, p. 291, note. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 29 1 

May 29, 1775, to keep in touch with similar committees all 
A3ver the province. They were : — 

Deacon Isaac Lincoln. Thomas Bourne. 

Obadiah Lincoln. Thomas Lothrop. 

Stephen Stoddard. Benjamin Gushing. 
Abel Kent. 

Six or seven town meetings in course of the year were 
held to do necessary legislating. 

What became of the Cohasset company after the battle 




Military Hat and Cartridge Box, worn by Cohasset Revolution- 
ary Soldiers. The Box was at Burgovne's Surrender. 

of Bunker Hill can never be very fully known. Their 
time was out on August i and they were paid off, 
averaging about seventeen dollars for privates, less than 
seven dollars a month. No doubt many were reenlisted 
in other service. Perhaps some went with Benedict 
Arnold upon his daring march into Canada, losing their 
lives in the terrible journey through the woods of Maine 
or in the fierce assault upon Quebec. Some came home 
again to do their farm work which had been sadly neg- 



>92 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



lected in the excitement of war. A few of them reappear 
upon later pay rolls for service on guard at Hull from that 
December to the next April. 

The British soldiers were in the habit of foraging for 
food and booty at convenient distance from their ships, so 
that these coast defenses were posted. The one at Hull 
was the famous fortification overlooking the channel of 
Boston Harbor. 



A PAY ROLL FOR 


LIEUT. OBEDIAH BEAI 


.'S GUARD THAT WAS 


STATIONED AT HULL BEACH, FROM DEC. 


12, 1775. 


TO APR. 3 


, 1776.* 






Time of 5 


service. 


Pay. 










£ 


.r. ^. 


Obediah Beal, Liei 


J tenant 


. . 3 mos. 2 


4 days 


13 


13 7 


Richard Tower, Sergeant 




» 


35 


8 


7 2 


Noah Merrill, Corporal 




>> 


>> 


7 


12 


Elisha Dunbar, Private 




• >> 


>> 


6 


16 10 


Micah Nichols, 


)> 




» 


J> 


6 


16 ID 


James Stoddard, 






}> 


if 


6 


16 10 


Thomas Bourne, 


>> 




>> 


JJ 


6 


16 10 


Joseph Willcutt, 






J5 


>• 


6 


16 10 


Joseph Bates, 






• J> 


>J 


6 


16 ID 


John Tower, 






>> 


>> 


6 


[6 10 


Ephr'm Lincoln, 


)> 




5> 


J> 


6 


16 ID 


Joseph Hudson, 






>> 


J) 


6 


r6 10 


Hezekiah Hudson, 






>J 


>> 


6 


16 10 


Abel Beals, 






J> 


}> 


6 


16 10 


Joshua Beals, 






)> 


>> 


6 


[6 10 


Wetwm Beals, 






>> 


J> 


6 


[6 10 


Samuel Kilby, 






5> 


>> 


6 


[6 10 


Henry Lambert, 






>J 


)J 


6 


[6 10 


Nicholson Lobdon, 


>> 




5> 


>> 


6 


[6 10 


HiNGHAM, December 23, 


177 


6. 









Oath by Obediah Beal before Benj. Gushing, J. P. 

WOODBRIDGE & BROWN, 
SETH LORING, 

Examined December 25. Clerks on part of the Board. 

* Revolutionary Records, Vol. XXV, p. 83. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



293 



Washington's plans to oust the British were getting 
into shape during the winter that followed his appoint- 
ment. Heavy guns were necessary to be planted upon 
the Dorchester Heights commanding Boston Harbor on 
the southeast. 

Henry Knox, a trusty artillery colonel of General 
Washington, under whom our James Hall was a sergeant, 
brought in a great quantity of cannon by March i, 1776, 
some of them dragged on sleds all the way from 
Ticonderoga. 

During the night of March 4, a heavy roar of cannon- 
ading disturbed the rest of our sleeping townsmen ; but 
the noise of it was just what our crafty general wanted. 
By keeping the attention of the British upon the guns at 
Somerville and East Cambridge and Roxbury, his long 
procession of wagons with timber and artillery moved 
unnoticed to Dorchester Heights,* and in the morning 
the outwitted British general, Howe, beheld with amaze- 
ment the sudden fortress covering his fleet. 

The part of Cohasset in this first masterly stroke of 
the war may be guessed by the thirty-three men who had 
marched the preceding day to Dorchester under Captain 
Obediah Beal to take part in this emergency. 

ROLL FOR CAPTALN OBEDIAH DEAL'S CO. OF COHASSET, 
MARCHED TO DORCHESTER, MCH. 4, 1776 — 20 MILES.I 

Obediah Beals, Captain. Caleb Pratt, Corporal. 

Levi Bates, Lieutenant. Levi Tower, Drummer. 

Gideon Howard, Lieutenant. Aaron Pratt, Private. 

Isaac Tower, Sergeant. James Lichfield, „ 

Zealous Bates, „ Ignatius Orcutt, „ 

Isaac Burr, „ Job Whitcomb, „ 

Simeon Stodder, „ John Burbank, „ 

Caleb Joy, Corporal. Nat'l Bates, „ 

Jerod Battles, „ Benja. Cushing, „ 

Jona. Bates, „ Lot Whitcomb, „ 

* Now South Boston. f Revolutionary Records, Vol. XVH, p. 71. 



294 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Ambrose Bates, Private. Abraham Lincoln, Private. 

Joseph Briggs, „ Benjamin Jacobs, „ 

Bozworth Collier, „ Abner Bates, „ 

Thos. Pratt, „ William Collier, „ 

John Prichard, „ Luke Orcutt, „ 

Eli Lane, „ Stephen Stodder, „ 

Obediah Tower, „ 

November i, 1776, at Hingham, Captain Obediah Beal made 
oath to the foregoing roll before me. 

BENJ. GUSHING, Jtis. Peace. 

It was a day of gladness for this town as well as for 
Boston when on the seventeenth of March, 1776, the 
British fleet was seen sailing out of the harbor to Halifax. 
The brunt of the war never again came so close to our 
thresholds ; but the coast guards at Hull and other places 
were kept up, and forces were continually on the alert. 

An amusing incident of that period is told about a 
British vessel loaded principally with rum which had not 
learned the news of the withdrawal of Howe's fleet. 
She came sailing slowly towards Boston, in sight of our 
shore, intending to supply the British soldiers with their 
customary beverage ; but our sailors caught sight of her 
and quickly organized an attack under James Stoddard, 
who afterwards became a militia major. The becalmed 
brig had nothing but Quaker guns for a make-believe 
defense, and she therefore fell captive to our little priva- 
teer crew. 

She was steered into our harbor as a prize of the daring 
young men that captured her. It is a pity that nothing 
better than rum should have been her cargo ; but in those 
days rum was not a disgraceful commodity, and it readily 
sold for good money. The town gossip for many days 
was filled with reiterations of the incidents in this capture. 
It was even proclaimed from the pulpit on Sunday, April 
14, 1776. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 295 

Rev. John Brown had a sermon upon the text, " Re- 
joice with them that do rejoice ; and weep with them that 
weep," which had been written more than fifteen years, 
but had done duty on several important occasions. 

It had been delivered on January 25, 1761, "when the 
small pox was raging at Hingham Plain," says John 
Brown on the margin of his manuscript, and again "after 
the Death of B. Stutson's Wife, Sept 25th 1774." This 
sermon was brought out and preached again in honor of 
our patriots* good fortunes, with emphasis upon the " re- 
joicing" part of the text. 

The preacher's addition to suit the occasion of the rum 
capture was as follows, in part : — 

God has blessed a number of our neighbors in the week past, 
by prospering them in taking from those who were designing to 
supply our barbarous enemies a very considerable part of their 
property. It becomes us to adore that Providence who setteth 
down one and setteth up another. Let none of us be so in- 
humane and antichristian as to murmur or be envious but let us 
rejoice with them that do rejoice &c &c — a more signal instance 
of the smiles of Providence in temporal accounts we have not 
known in this place.* 

Thus the public delight at our war prize was encouraged, 
and doubtless other incidents of privateering must have 
occurred. The peninsula of Hull at the entrance of 
Boston Harbor was particularly convenient for utilizing 
Cohasset volunteers upon guard duty. The following 
lists of men engaged in that service add to the Revolu- 
tionary record of the town : — 

tA True return of the travil & time of Service of the Men 
belonging to the foot company in Cohasset under the command 
of Capt. Obediah Beals in Col. Solomon Levels Regt. Assembled 
at Hull June 14, 1776. 

* This manuscript sermon is owned by Mrs. George L. Davenport, 
t Revolutionary Records, Vol, XXV, p. 78. 



296 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



£ s. d.farth. 

2 days' service. Pay for Privates o 4 1 1 2 

Captain o 10 3 2 

Travel 20 mi. 

„ fees i^. 8 farthings. 

HiNGHAM, March 24, 1777. 

Then Capt. Obediah Beal swore to following roll before me, 

BENJA. GUSHING, /. P. 



Obediah Beals, Captain. 
Levi Bates, Lieutenant. 
Gideon Howard, „ 
Richard Kilby, Sergeant. 
Zealous Bates, „ 
Isaac Tower, „ 

Caleb Joy, Corporal. 
Caleb Pratt, „ 
Nathaniel Bates, Private. 
Adna Bates, 
Lusitanus Stephenson, 
Elisha Stephenson, 
Timothy Cushing, 
Jacob Beals, 
Luke Stephenson, 
Jared Battles, 
John Prichard, 



Jerom Lincoln, 
Bozworth Collier, 
Ephraim Lincoln, 
Richard Tower, 
Stephen Stoddar, 
William Bates, 
Ambrose Bates, 
Allyn Lincoln, 
Jonathan Loring, 
Samuel Kilby, 

Lambert, 

Elijah Hudson, 

Whitcomb, 

eon Stoddar, 

Stoddar, 

Hudson, 



Private. 



* True Return of the Travil & Time of service of the men 
belonging to Hingham & Cohasset under the Com. of Capt. 
Peter Cushing in Col. Solomon Lovel's Regt. 

Assembled at Hull December 14, 1776. Time, 4 days. Pay, 



fLevi Bates, Lieutenant. 
Jerome Stephenson, Lieutenant. 
John Burbank, Sergeant. 
Nathaniel Bates, Corporal. 
Levi Tower, Drummer. 



Benjamin Joy, Private. 

Abner Bates, • „ 

Jno. Wilcutt, Jr., „ 

Daniel Nichols, Jr., „ 
Gershom Wheelwright, „ 



* Revolutionary Records, Vol. XXV, p. 95. 

fSome names taken from complete list, Cohasseters guessed at. 



THE RE VOL UTIONAR Y IVAR. 297 

Ambrose Bates, Private. Jona. Bates, Private. 

Zenas Lincoln, „ John Pritchet, 

JobWilcutt, „ Adnai Bates, 

Samuel Bates, Jr., „ 

In the summer of 1776, on the eighth day of June, 
Richard Henry Lee in Congress at Philadelphia submitted 
the resolution which became afterwards the Declaration 
of Independence. Six days after it was submitted, having 
heard the news but not knowing whether Congress would 
adopt it, we pledged ourselves at a town meeting to sup- 
port it " with our lives and fortunes, if the American Con- 
gress should declare the United Colonies independent of 
the kingdom of Great Britain." Thus the Fourth of July 
began here on the fourteenth day of June.* 

The lives and fortunes of the town were soon taxed. 
August 22, 1776, they voted to raise fifty-two pounds to 
give as a bounty, in addition to the province bounty, to 
the four soldiers that were required of them for the 
Northern army. These four men, whoever they were, 
probably took part in the brilliant naval battle under 
Benedict Arnold in Lake Champlain, October 1 1, 1776, and 
rested with him at Ticonderoga if they were not slain in the 
battle. Before this battle had been fought sixteen more 
soldiers had been called by our town, September 19, with 
a bounty of sixty-four pounds, to march into Connecticut 
as a part of our State forces. In case these men were to 
be ordered into the regular Continental army the town 
voted, December 5, additional pay of forty shillings per 
month wages. But the war had ceased to be a novelty. 
Nearly two years had passed since the first excitements, 
and men were not easily to be found that could leave our 
already depleted communities. 

On December 9, 1776, the committee reported their 
failure to raise men, so that twenty shillings more were 

•The moderator of this meeting was Abel Kent, the noble Isaac Lincoln, so 
long moderator and the virtual father of the town, having died in 1775. 



298 HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 

added to the offer of forty shillings. An increase of three 
pounds a month was voted for any who might be ordered 
out of our State forces into the Continental service. 

From this time forward the Cohasset men were sepa- 
rated into different parts of the Continental army as 
well as in the State forces, and fought — no one knows 
where. It is probable that in each of the principal 
events* of that long war some men from Cohasset par- 
ticipated. We are fortunate in having a diary of one of 
them, Ambrose Bates, which tells of that first glorious 
victory over a large .British force when General Bur- 
goyne surrendered at Saratoga, N. Y. 

His messmates seem to have been : — 

Lazarus Lincoln. Josiah Bates. Seth Briggs. 

Elisha Joy. Eaton Simmons. Luke Stephenson. 

Zenas Lincoln. Seth Stowell. Briton Nichols. 

David Hersey. David Harmon. 

Of these men, David Hersey and Seth Stowell were 
probably from Hingham, for men from both towns were 
often thrown together in the Continental army. In the 
Hingham town history there are several lists in which 
Cohasset men are included. 

What other men from Cohasset might have been with 
Ambrose Bates in the Burgoyne campaign, serving either 
in the militia or in the Continental army, there is no 
means of knowing. 

At least one more, Cornelius Bates, whose grave is in 
Beechwood, did service in the New York maneuvers. 

At a town meeting on August 18, 1777, it was voted to 

* One example of unwritten records in the Continental service is the story of 
Noah Nichols, who lived many years after the war and who used to tell how 
General Washington ordered him to repair the wheel of a gun carriage while on 
one of his forced marches. When Nichols asked permission to stop off to mend 
the wheel the General answered him with an abrupt refusal. " It was the hardest 
thing I ever did," the veteran would add in telling the story, " but I did it." 
(See Judge Russell's Centennial Address.) 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 299 

" raise a sum of Money to incurrage our proportion of 
Men voluntarily to engage in the Service until the last 
day of Nov. next." 

A committee was appointed to get twelve men either 
from this town or elsewhere as cheaply as they could. 
They had much trouble and it took eight men on the 
committee to procure twelve soldiers, and that only at 
excessive cost. But the men had to be furnished. There 
were some opposers to the patriot cause in this com- 
munity, for the town clerk was allowed "to draw out a 
sum of money from the treasury to carry on a Process 
against those persons of the town who are esteemed 
inimical * to these States " The soldiers to reinforce the 
Northern army went, and the following is the diary of 
one of them : — 

DIARY OF AMBROSE BATES. 

(The Campaign against General Burgoyne which ended in his surrender at 

Saratoga, N. Y). 

Cohasset August the 27''* day 1777. 

that night stopt in Hingham. 

the 28 day that night stopt in Roksbury. 

the 29 day that night stopt in Sutbury. 

the 30 day that night stopt in Suseburry. 

the 31 day night Spenser. 

Sep stopt in ware town. 

the 2 day that night stopt in hadlay. 

the 3 day that night stopt in North hamton. 

Several pages are missing here. They may have re- 
counted the incidents of a march to Lake Champlain for 
the purpose of cutting off the supplies of Burgoyne. At 
any rate, Gen. Benjamin Lincoln's strong force of mi- 
litia pressed down upon Burgoyne from the North, while 
the army of General Gates pressed from the South. The 
diary continues after twenty-five days : — 

*See note on p. 285 about Dr. Lazarus Real. 



300 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Sep 28 and had orders to march and man the lines, we 
marched to headquarters and then marched back to our own 
quarters and had orders to march to H. Q. with baggage by the 
break of day. 

the 29 we marched to head Qu by the Gun firing, then 
marched to sum Bush Tents and there to stay till further orders 
and was to turn out to larrumpost at 4. o'clock in the morning 
and at role call at the Gun firing at night. 

the 30. this morning we turned to Larrumpost and turned sum 
men for picket. 

October the i. 1777 Nothing new today. 

October the 2. last night we took i British fifer. 

October the 3. we took 65 prisners and 40 head of cattle. 

October the 4. nothing new today, only we were alarmed with 
a skouting party of the British. 

October the 5. nothing new today. 

October the 6. today there came in 12 Hessians, and we 
was alarmed and marched to the larrumpost and back again. 

October the 7. 1777 today we had a fight we were alarmed 
about noon and the fight begun, 

the sun two hours high at night and we drove them and took 
field pieces and took sum prisners 

October the 8. 1777 today our people marched off down to 
the enemys lines and then towards Serretoge and then came in a 
major Hession and 80 with him. 

October the 9. 1777 today the enemy left their lines and sick 
and wounded and 200 barrels of flour and are retreating. 

the 10. today we took 1000 Pork and 2 pieces of Cannon 
and some prisoners. 

the II day today we took 50 prisoners and got most round 
Burguine. 

the 12 day today we took 50 deserters and have got all round 
Burguines army. 

the 13 day today we took 30 prisoners and had 10 or 20 
deserters. 

the 14 day nothing done today only cessation of arms for this 
afternoon and they are sending fiagatruces one to another and 1 2 
deserters came in. 

the 15 today Gen. Gates and Burguine were trying to settle so 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



301 



as not to have no more fighting and there has been a cessation of 
arms for 2 days. 

the 16 today the articles were signed by Gen. Burguine and is 
to come out the 17 day at 10 o'clock in the morning. 



^^ 









n 



\ 4^>T^ VvCr// ^,>^ .V"^=^ 5 



(fxy/ti*^ 








^ ,'^ .'hmt^^ nz^'priJ^r A^^!^V 









,tt*u 6'*n^ 














A Leaf from the Diary of Ambrose Bates, one of our Cuhasset 

Revolutionary Soldiers, telling of Burgoyne's Surrender 

at Saratoga, N.Y., October 17, 1777. 



302 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



the 1 7 today Gen. Burguine and his whole army came out and 

delivered themselves up as prisoners of war, grounded their arms 

and marched through our army. 

AMBROSE BATES 

the 1 8 day today the prisoners marched for Boston, the num- 
ber near as I can hear is 5545 

the 19 today all peace and quietness. 

the 20 today we marched to Half moon 15 miles 

the 21 today we marched to Albany 12 miles, and it was a very 
smart snow storm. 

the 22 day nothing new today. 

the 23 day today we had orders to march down the river. 

the 24 day we went down the river miles to Greenbush. 

the 25 day we went down the river to Cononburg 16 miles and 
there staid i day in tent 

the 27 today we went down the river to Catskill 10 miles and 
there staid the 28 & 29 

the 30 day went down the river to West Camp 12 miles 

the 31 day we went down the river to Esopus 12 miles 

November the i day 1777 today we went down to fort patten 
9 miles. 

November the 2. 1777 today went down the river to New Win- 
sor 21 miles. 

November the 3. day 1777 today we went back to Newberg 2 
miles. 

Newberg. Nov. the 4 day. nothing new today. 

5 today we went down the river to Peekskill 25 miles 

the 6 day nothing new today. Cap of the sloop 
with 200 barrels of flour. 

the 7 day today we went down the river to Tarrytown 25 miles. 

Tarrytown Camp. November the 8 day 1777 Nothing new to- 
day 

the 9 day nothing new today. 

the 10 day nothing new today. 

the 1 1 day nothing new today. 

the 12 day today we marched to White Plains 8 miles 

the 12 day today there came in 10 tory deserters. 

the 13 day today there came in 5 regular deserters 

the 14 day nothing new today. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



303 



November the 15, 1777 nothing new today. 

the 16 day nothing new today came in one deserter 

the 17 day, the regiment brigade was alarmed 

the 17 day nothing today. 

the 18 day today the brigade was alarmed by a scouting party 
of the Regulars which landed below Tarrytown and burnt some 
houses and some barns and carried off 2 horses and some men. 

the 19 day nothing new today. 

Tarrytown Camp, November the 20 day 1777 Nothing new 
today. 

the 21 day today there was alarmed and a 'tachment of 300 
men out of the brigade were sent down to Tarrytown and there 
was nothing there : so we drawed a gill of rum and came back 
again 

the 22 day nothing new today. 

the 23 day nothing new today. 

the 24 day nothing new today. 

Tarrytown Camp November the 25 day. nothing new today. 

the 26 day nothing new today. 

the 27 day today the brigade was alarmed and marched down 
towards Kings Bridge and then marched back to New Rochelle 
and there staid till the 29 day. 

November the 30 day, Captain Manner's Camp, today our 
times are out and we march for home. 

December the 7 day we arrived home. 

End of Journal. 

The joyful news of Burgoyne's surrender reached Co- 
hasset much earlier than her soldiers returned, but on both 
occasions there was no little happiness here. The success 
of the American cause seemed now assured, and it was 
confidently expected that within another three years the 
soldiers of King George would all be driven from our land. 
A new call for Continental soldiers was therefore issued 
for a service of three years, or till the end of the war. 
When Burgoyne's prison army came to Cambridge, our 
town had to furnish its share of soldiers to keep guard of 
the captives, so the town records say. First, six men were 



^04 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



called "to do duty until the first of the following March," 
and then in February, seventeen more were required " to 
do duty as guard for three months at or near Boston." 

The following list of men, with the captains of their 
companies and the colonels of their regiments, was sub- 
mitted by Captain Obediah Beal, and may be of interest 
here : — 

A RETURN OF MEN WHO HAVE ENGAGED IN THE CONTINEN- 
TAL SERVICE FOR THE TOWN OF COHASSET 
FOR THREE YEARS.* 
Colonel, 



Graton. 



Crane. 

Baileys. 

Jackson. 



Captain. 



Langdon. 



Ruben Thorne. 

Amos Brown. 

Joseph Willcutt, Jr. 

Luke Bates. 

Elisha Bate, Jr. 

Joseph Marble. 

Joseph Souther, Jr. 
fThomas Guy. 
t William Connelly, 
tjean Philip Beaunard. 
fNichols Brown. 
•[David Atwood. 

William Staples, 
t Nathaniel Dispereau. 
fBenjamin Adams, 
tjohn Bowels. 
jBenjamin AUd. 
tSamuel Orr. 

Andrew Beal. 

Caleb Nichols. 

Bela Nichols. 

Melzarjoy. „ „ „ 

James Stoddar. „ „ „ 

Jonathan Bates. „ „ „ 

Return made by Captain Obediah Beal for Cohasset, February 
i6, 1778. 



Nathaniel Jarvis. 
Garvin Brown. 



Noah Nichols. 



* Revolutionary Records, Vol. XL, p. 204. 

t Several hired by town of Cohasset whose homes were elsewhere. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 



305 



The war expenses were enormous for a country so poor, 
and our Congress had only the meagerest power to raise 
money. Our town was in debt about one thousand 
pounds, and the wealthiest of her citizens from whom she 
might borrow were now nearly bankrupt. 

The Continental paper money was depreciating so fast 
that a soldier's wages 




^^ 






melted away in his 
hands without being 
spent. In fact, the 
soldiers of our town 
demanded corn for 
payment of the 
town's part of their 
money. A cynical 
barber in Philadel- 
phia papered the walls 
of his shop with the 
cheap stuff, and 
another person tarred 
and feathered a dog 
with bills. Our fish- 
ing interests had been 
killed for several years 
by the British cruis- 
ers, so that this town 
lost one important 
source of revenue. 

When the poor 
soldiers at Valley 
Forge that winter, IJTJ-J^y needed clothing it is probable 
that some Cohasset homes received piteous letters from 
the suffering patriots, and the clothes needed by Cohasset 
men were paid for out of the town treasury.* 




Face and Back of 

1778. 
" Not worth a continental. 



FIFTY-DOLLAR BILL, 



* Vote of April 13, 1778. Jeorum Lincoln was at least one Cohasset soldier in the 
Jersey campaign camping that winter and in the battle of Morristown, 



5o6 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



To add to the town's distress the smallpox broke out in 
our midst that next summer. In April they had " voted 
to have an Enoculation * for the Small Pox opened in this 
town where it may be most advantajus and least prejudi- 
tial to the Inhabitants thereof." This hospital for the 

smallpox was built 
upon an open pasture 
southeast of Little 
Harbor near a small 
stream called the Mo- 
hawk. Beach Street 
was not then cut 
through to Atlantic 
Avenue, and a mere 
wood road led to the 
hospital. 

The keeper was 
Mrs. Daniel Tower 
(Bethiah Nichols), a 
dauntless woman 
who was nicknamed 
" Resolution " Tower. 
She is said to have 
carted water in bar- 
rels from Lily Pond 
to water the corn 
during a drought 
while the men 
were away in the 
Revolutionary War. She lived on King Street, and 
was the mother of the similar heroine, Persis, already 
mentioned. 

The town records say that one Ebenezer Lane claimed 
twenty dollars damage on account of this smallpox hospi- 

* This inoculation was the preventive treatment practiced before Jenner gave to 
the world in 1798 the milder and better vaccination. 




Face and Back of a Four-dollar Bill 

paid to a cohasset revolutionary 

Soldier. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 3O7 

tal, and that Lieut. James Hall claimed an allowance for 
having to move away his family for fear of infection. 

In May of 1778 another levy of soldiers was made; this 
time it was "eight men to go to the Southward." An 
offer of four dollars per day and sixpence mileage was 
made to any person willing to engage for six months upon 
this expedition in Rhode Island against the British at 
Newport ; but no persons would engage. Whether any 
ever went, the town records do not say ; but James Lin- 
coln, aged seventeen, was in Rhode Island five months 
and twenty days, and probably other Cohasset boys were 
there. For the next year the operations of war were con- 
fined to the Connecticut coast and southward as far as 
Georgia. The activity here in the North was mainly in 
raising funds and in making experiments towards a State 
government. In the year 1780 the Constitution of our 
State was adopted, with its bill of rights containing the 
words, " All men are created free and equal " ; and by that 
word "free " we stepped far ahead of the national Consti- 
tution, so that slavery from the first was illegal in our 
State. September, 1780, the first State governor, John 
Hancock,* we helped to elect. For his lieutenant we cast 
our ballots for the great Hingham general, Benjamin Lin- 
coln. Our first State representative was Lieut. Stephen 
Stoddard, of Beechwood. 

The long and tedious struggle for independence was not 
yet ended ; indeed, at this very time, when the State of 
Massachusetts was getting organized for an independent 
government, the success of the Continental army in the 
face of a foe so numerous and strong as the British had 
poured into our land was gravely doubtful. 

In the summer of 1780 nine men were sent into the 
Continental service for six months, as the following inter- 
esting lists will show : — 

*It is said that Governor Hancock once visited Cohasset, bringing his servants 
with him, and stopped with Rev. John Brown at the pastor's home by the Common. 



3o8 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF THE TWENTY-FIRST DIVISION OF SIX 

MONTHS MEN. MARCHED FROM SPRINGFIELD UNDER 

CARE OF CAPTAIN CLARK, JULY 19, 1780. 97 MEN.* 

Stature. 



Names. 


Age. 


ft. 


in. 


Comp. 


Arrived at Springfield. 


Daniel Hudson 


20 


5 


5 


light 


July 19, 1780 


Jonathan Bates 


23 


5 


8 


)5 




Levi Oakes 


20 


5 


.S 


JJ 




David Nichols 


20 


,S 


10 


»» 




Elijah Bonney 


16 


5 




freckles 




Thomas Willcutt 


20 


5 


10 


dark 




Luke Stephens 


23 


5 


9 


ruddy 




Naaman Nichols 


18 


5 


4 


light 




Briton Nichols 


40 


5 


II 


negro 





Received of Justin Ely Esq. Commissioner for the state of 
Mass. Bay the 97 men — &c raised to reinforce the Continental 
army for 6 months Resolve of Gen'l Court of sd State June 
5th 1780 and forwarded said men to the army under the care of 

Capt. Clark. 

JNO. GLOVER, B. General. 
True copy. 

JUSTIN ELY, Comftiissiotier. 

A PAY ROLL FOR THE SIX MONTH MEN RAISED FOR THE TOWN 

OF COHASSET AND IMPLOYED IN THE CONTINENTAL 

SERVICE IN THE YEAR 1780. t 





V 

J) 
Q 




u 


c 


Time of 
Discharge. 


1b 
.Si 


Whole time 
of service in- 
cluding time 
home. 


Wages Due. 






Cohasset. 


Daniel Hudson . 
Levi Oaks, . 
Elijah Bonney, B. 
Britain Nichols . 
Thomas Willcutt 
Jona. Bates, B. . 
Luke Stephenson 
David Nichols . 
Naaman Nichols 


I 

N. 

N. 

N. 
N. 


Jub 


f 13 


Dec. 6. 

Dec. 8. 

Jan. 7 
,, 18 
,, 18 


250 
250 
250 
250 
250 
•250 
250 
250 


m. da. 

5 5 
5 5 
5 5 
5 7 

5 7 

6 6 
6 17 
6 17 


£ s. d. 

10 6 8 
10 6 8 
ID 6 8 
10 9 4 
10 9 4 

12 8 

13 2 8 
13 2 8 














^90 12 



* Revolutionary Rolls, Vol. XXXV, p. 202. 



t/^«</.. Vol. IV, p. 54. 



THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. 3O9 

One of these, Levi Oakes, was the youngest son of a 
family that furnished five sons for the Revolutionary 
War. It is said that the mother, being left a widow during 
the war, applied for the release of one of her sons, 
that she might have some one to help her in her bereave- 
ment. 

In December of 1780 there were nine more men to be 
procured to serve in the Continental army "for three 
years or during the present war " ; but there is no men- 
tion of success in getting them, nor can any government 
rolls be found telling who the men were. 

The next year, 1781, in August, seven more soldiers 
were requested to be sent to Rhode Island ; for along the 
coast of Connecticut the traitor Benedict Arnold was now 
leading a British force to harass the patriots, foolishly 
thinking to draw Washington from his great stratagem in 
cornering Cornwallis at Yorktown, Virginia. 

But the great strategist, our beloved Washington, was 
already upon the enemy ; before the end of September 
the Continental army with its French allies had sur- 
rounded Cornwallis upon that peninsula and had sprung 
the mousetrap. Cornwallis and his powerful army of 
British soldiers were helpless. On October 19 the 
British general placed his sword into the hand of Gen. 
Benjamin Lincoln of Hingham, and the army marched 
through our ranks — prisoners ! 

The long, weary struggle was ended. With heavy bur- 
dens of debt, families broken by the war, and industries 
paralyzed, our town began its life under a free flag. The 
story of its recuperation is more agreeable than the sor- 
rows of its long war period ; but we need never to be 
ashamed of the long, suffering patriotism of our town 
that sent more than one hundred and twenty men from 
its population of one hundred and sixty-five polls into the 
ranks of that g-lorious war. 



310 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



The following records of Cohasset soldiers who reached 
the rank of officers in the Continental army are taken from 
Heitman's " Continental Officers " : — 

James Hall. Sergeant in Knox's Regiment Continental Artil- 
lery, February to December, 1 766. Second Lieutenant in Tliird 
Continental Artillery, January i, 1777. First Lieutenant in Third 
Continental Artillery, September 12, 1777. Captain Lieutenant 
in Continental Artillery, April 12, 1780. Served till June, 1783. 
Died April 3, 18 19. 

Noah Nichols. Captain in Stevens' Battalion of Artillery, 
December 16, 1776. Captain in Second Continental Artillery, 

1778. Resigned April 3, 1780. 

Bela Nichols, Quartermaster of Stevens' Battalion Third 
Continental Artillery, July 11, 1777. First Lieutenant, March i, 

1779. Resigned April 7, 1780. Died November 18, 1831. 
Nathaniel Nichols. First Lieutenant in Heath's Regiment, 

May to December, 1775. 

Benjamin Beal. Second Lieutenant in Heath's Regiment, 
May, 1775. 



CHAPTER XV. 

RECUPERATING DURING THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 

THERE was no abrupt closing of the Revolutionary 
War for Cohasset. The soldiers did not come home 
in such well-filled companies as marched out when first 
the news from Lexington roused the town. Some had 
fallen in the struggle, many had returned from the earlier 
years of service unwilling to reenlist, and the few that 
served until the surrender of Cornwallis came home quietly 
to take up again the work of farming or of fishing. 

Hard times with crushing debts were upon the people 
here as elsewhere in the new nation. But fortunately for 
us we had been long accustomed to meager fare, and were 
quite capable of squeezing a living out of the tough cir- 
cumstances. We could not get much money for our fish 
nor for our cord wood ; but we had need of but little 
money, for we bought only a few things outside of the 
town's own produce. 

The financial embarrassment of the town may be in- 
ferred from the fact that in May, 1782, not even the 
interest upon the town's debts was paid, and it was voted 
to add this interest to the debt to draw compound interest. 
The new taxes to support the State were so hard to col- 
lect that the town, February 25, 1782, petitioned the Gen- 
eral Court for some abatement of the amount laid upon 
this town. 

Even the church janitor had to wait more than three 
years for his yearly pittance of one pound four shillings. 

Rev. John Brown's salary for 1780, 1781, and 1782 was 
not all paid in May, 1783, and according to the entries in 



3 I 2 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

his diary* for the year 1781-82, his meager income was 
brought in the form of the necessary food and stove wood. 

The activity about our Cove in shipbuilding and fish 
packing cannot be accurately known, because of the loss 
of so many records or because they were so scantily 
written. There was a population of nearly eight hundred 
persons to support, and there were probably more than 
thirty small schooners engaged in the fishing industry. 

The Custom House in Boston might have furnished 
more records of vessels built at Cohasset had it not been 
for the pillaging by our British cousins. 

All the records previous to the year 1776 were confis- 

*SOME ITEMS FROM A SHORT DIARY OF REV, JOHN BROWN. 
Oct. 178 1. Had of Mr Obadiah Lincoln i cord of Wood towards my quota for 

the present year. 
Jan 1782 514 feet of wood by estimation, perhaps scant. 
Oct 1781 Had of Jno Willcutt three barrels of Cyder and one hard Dollar, 
Dec. 1781 Had of Aaron Prat \y^ bush Rye. 
Mar. 1781 Had of Samuel Oakes 2 Quarts of Rum 
Oct 1781 23 lbs. Corn Beef (poor) 12 Lb Butter i bush Ind. Corn, 14 Lb 

Brown Sugar. 
June 1781. Had of Zenas Bates a side of lamb, (middling). Weight 14% lbs at 

6 pence hard money a pound. 
June 2 1781. Lent Mrs Stodder a loin of Veal wt 61/^ lbs. July 6, The VeaJ 

paid. 
Mar 7th 1781. Henry Bourn begins his schooling with me. 
Sept 25. 1781 Lizzie Nichols comes to live with us for 40^ old Tenor pr annum 

or £,^-s.(y Lawful. 
Nov 1782 Paid Lizzie in full and took her receipt. 

June 1781 Tim. Cushing worked half a day weeding corn and potatoes. 
June 1781. Borrowed i junk Bottle of Rum of Mr Samuel Bates. 
July. I Ditto. Paid both in good Old spirit. And a bottle for bringing keg 

from Boston, a present from Mr Doane —A mean demand from my gener- 
ous neighbor Bates. 
Aug 6 Began upon Mr Doanes Rum. 

Oct. 178 1 Had of Simeon Stodder i Quarter Mutton i Hard dollar. 
Feb 1782 Galen James brought one cord of wood, paid by certificate to 

Selectmen. 
Oct 29 1781. Great rejoicing at my house with Col. Doane, son & others at news 

of the Reduction of Cornwallis. 
Nov II. Sunday. At Home. Preached on Surrender of Cornwallis, a Devil, at 

Virginia. 
Nov. 29 Went to Hull to marry a couple lodged at Cap. Souter's, 
Dec 2 No Meeting by reason of a painful Inflamation in eyes. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 313 

cated and taken to Halifax, N. S., when the British 
evacuated Boston and were thrown into a damp cellar. 
Nearly seventy-five years later, when some accommodating 
Halifax officials searched them out for an American anti- 
quarian, they were so rotten and rat eaten as to be utterly 
useless. 

For thirteen years until 17S9 we had no established 
port of entry. The earliest enrollment now in our 
Custom House which concerns Cohasset, is dated 1790 
and records a square stern schooner called the Lark, 
built in Cohasset for Eben Parsons of Boston in the year 
1 78 1. It was as large as the largest in the fleet of 1768 
mentioned in the chapter on the Separation ; but that 
was only thirty-five tons. The length of the Lark was 
fifty-six feet four inches ; breadth, fourteen feet nine 
inches ; depth, five feet eleven inches. She had but one 
deck and two masts. 

The ship carpenters and sailmakers and blacksmiths 
and sawmillers and timber men at work on this schooner 
in the summer of 1781 may be imagined. Perhaps more 
than the Lark were built that year, and undoubtedly other 
vessels built elsewhere were sailed from our harbor. 

Captain Nehemiah Manson, of Cohasset, some years 
later sailed the Hannah, built in Scituate. Captain John 
Sutton, of Cohasset, sailed the Beckey, a fifty-four ton 
schooner built in Scituate, 1784. Captain Samuel Bates 
sailed and partly owned the Nancy, a sixty-three ton 
sloop, built as far away as Damariscotta, Maine, in 1786. 

In the year 1783 there was at least one more schooner 
built here giving considerable employment. It was the 
Hawk, owned by John Lewis, of Cohasset, measuring 
sixty-one tons, nearly twice the size of the Lark. In 
1784 a large sloop of thirty-seven tons was built and 
christened the Spry. 

The shipbuilding moved on faster and larger craft 
were undertaken. 



314 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Three were pushed off the stocks in the year 1785, 
The Bethiah, a sixty-two tonner, for John Lewis, and the 
Greyhound of thirty-five tons for the same owner, were 
two. The Hannah, measuring the same tonnage with the 
Greyhound, was the third. 

The next year, 1786, there came to the town a man 
whose wealth and energy and culture had a lasting effect 
upon this community. It was Elisha Doane,* son of the 
Elisha Doane who was called " the richest man in New 
England, with an estate valued at 125,000 pounds ster- 
ling." 

The Cohasset Elisha Doane was one of five heirs to 
this estate, and he came here to dwell in a house upon 
the corner of the present Sohier and Main Streets, where 
now a little cupola covers the old cellar. His father is 
said to have owned at one time one hundred vessels upon 
the sea, doing a world-wide commerce. The fishing 
industry of this town was an opportunity for this son ; 
but he began at once to inaugurate also a mill f enter- 
prise at the mouth of the Gulf River. He secured the 
interest of Deacon Abel Kent, who owned "Kent's 
Rocks" on the south side of the Cove, and appealed to 
the towns of Scituate and Cohasset for the right to build 
a dam where a tide mill of great power might be erected. 

In the year 1792 the towns both granted to him and 
his partners in the enterprise the right to build a dam 
for the use of a gristmill. Flood gates were required for 
the passage of vessels into the Gulf, for some ship- 
building was carried on farther up towards the mouth of 
Bound Brook, and large gondolas of cord wood were fre- 
quently shipped down the Gulf on their way to Boston. 

It was a sort of stock company divided into sixty-four 
parts, owned by Elisha Doane, Isaac Smith of Hingham, 

♦Grandson of the Captain Elisha Doane in whose company John Wheelwright 
was a soldier at Louisburg. (See p. 277.) 

tThe town voted, March 12, 1787, " that it is willing to have a Grist Mill set up 
at the Gulf." 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



15 



Abel Kent, Job Turner of Scituate, and Samuel Stock- 
bridge, the total value being about two hundred and forty 
pounds sterling. This mill was soon built, and it had 




A - 






\ 




..1 



First Map of the Town made for the State. 
Gristmills at the Cove and Bound Rock. Reduced to one fourth dimensions. 

an interesting career in grinding at different periods of 
its existence corn, wheat, barley, rice, and even chalk. 



3 1 6 IirS TOR V OF con A SSE T. 

Another enterprise inaugurated by this man was in 
Little Harbor, which we shall presently review. 

It is desirable to stop here at the year 1793 and repeat 
the story of one of the most famous shipwrecks in the 
history of our perilous coast. In the words of Rev. 
Jacob Flint* the story comes to us : — 

On February 12, 1793, the ship Gertrude-Maria, of 400 tons, 
bound from Copenhagen to Boston, with a cargo estimated at 
^40,000, and commanded by Hans Peter Clien, was wrecked on a 
small island, among Cohasset rocks, called Brush Island. Hav- 
ing entered the bay, the commander knew not the danger of his 
situation. Clouds obscured the light of the sun by day, of the 
moon and stars by night, and no small tempest with frost and 
snow lay upon them. In the awful war of elements, the ship was 
at the mercy of the fierce winds and mountainous billows. These 
threw her first upon a small ledge, where she suffered but partial 
injury ; then on the island, just named, whose sides are covered 
with pointed ledges. On these, the angry surges raised and 
depressed her with violence, till they broke her asunder. Death 
now staring every man in the face, trial was made by two men 
with a boat, to reach the shore. The boat was dashed to pieces. 
One was drowned, the other left to recover the wreck. At 
length, by extending a spar from the stern of the wreck, the 
survivors all got upon the island, where the waves could not reach 
them. Here they tarried, in the tempest, chilled with wet and 
frost, without fire or house to shelter them, till discovered early 
the next morning by the inhabitants of the town. Means for 
granting relief were immediately adopted. A boat was quickly 
brought to the beach, a mile overland. She was manned without 
delay, and plunged into the agitated surf, at the imminent hazard 
of the lives of the adventurers. She reached the island, and 
brought off three of the sufferers. Another attempt was imme- 
diately made, but the storm and the tumult of the sea increasing, 
it was frustrated by the destruction of the boat against the rocks. 
Two other boats were soon brought from a distance, and the 
dauntless exertions of the boatmen were renewed, till the suffer- 

*See his Centurv Discourses. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



C>^7 



ers, twenty-one in number, were all safely landed on the shore. 
Thence they were conveyed to the houses of Elisha Doane, Esq., 
and other gentlemen, where they were carefully warmed, clothed, 
and fed, as their frozen and perishing condition required. At 
these houses they remained, imbibing the wine and the oil, 
ministered by the hand of compassion, till their wounds were 
healed, and health restored. In the mean time, due attention 
was paid to their property, now the sport of the waters. An 
account of articles of the smallest, as well as of greater value, 
was given to the master of the ship ; insomuch that when all was 




Photo, M. H. Reamy. 

South Main Street, Center of the Village. 

collected, that could be saved, and sold at auction, its amount 
was 12,000 dollars. When the captain and his men (all it is said 
of the royal navy of his country) were provided with another 
vessel, and ready to leave the town, their hearts were swollen with 
grateful emotions toward those who, under God, had delivered 
and cherished them in their perils and distress. The captain, a 
man of much respectability, unable to utter his feelings, told his 
benefactors they should hear from him again. He sailed from 
Boston, and touching at St. Croix, published there an affecting 



3 I 8 If IS TOR Y OF COHA SSE 7 '. 

account of the compassion and hospitality he had experienced 
from the people of Cohasset. When arrived in Denmark, he 
gave to the king such a representation of the people here, as 
induced his majesty to order the College of Commerce to send in 
his majesty's name four large medals of gold, and ten of silver, 
with the likeness of himself impressed on one side, and with 
Danish words on the other, importing, Reward of Merit — Noble 
Deeds. 

With the medals of gold came directions — one for Rev. 
Josiah C. Shaw — one for Elisha Doane, Esq.* — one for Captain 
John Lewis t — and one for Captain Levi Tower. J The silver 
medals were designed for other citizens,§ who had been most 
active in giving relief to the sufferers. Honorable notice was 
likewise taken by the Humane Society, of the commendable 
humanity, here manifested to strangers in distress, and a pecun- 
iary donation was granted to the deserving agents. The governor 
of the Island of St. Croix manifested also the high sense he 
entertained of the benevolence of the people here, by his extraor- 
dinary kindness, on that account, to a gentleman from Boston. 
Mr. Daniel Hubbard, a respectable merchant of that town, was 
taken dangerously sick, on his passage home, from abroad, and 
put into the harbor of St. Croix, with a view to obtain medical 
aid and other assistance, which his perilous condition required. 
At first he was refused admission, prohibited by the laws of the 
place, lest he should communicate his sickness. But as soon as 
it was made known to the governor, that he was from Boston, 
he was removed on shore, and the best medical aid and every 
assistance and courtesy granted him, till he was recovered ; for 
which all compensation was refused — the governor alleging 

* The one given to Elisha Doane was stolen in a box of silver. 

fTwo communion cups of the First Parish Church have the following inscrip- 
tion : " This cup is the gift of the Widow Susanna Lewis, it being the proceeds of a 
gold medal from the King of Denmark to her late husband Capt. John Lewis 
1824." 

The rest of the value of the gold medal was used to make a silver porringer for 
Rev. Jacob Flint by his wife, the daughter of Captain Lewis. 

The porringer is now owned by Abraham H. Tower. 

J The Levi Tower medal has been lost. 

^^ One of the silver medals came to Abraham H. Tower, and it is said to have 
been remelted and made into six silver tablespoons, of which Miss Annie A. 
Souther has one. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 3 j 9 

that he was warranted in his conduct, by the humanity and great 
kindness Captain Clien and his crew had experienced, when ship- 
wrecked at Cohasset, near Boston. 

This was only one of countless wrecks that have 
strewn our shore, for not until more than two hundred 
years had passed was a lighthouse built on Minot's Ledge 
in 1847. During those years of wreckage there were 
many deeds of noble daring, and also many cases of cruel 
pillaging. Besides the good men who aided the unfortu- 
nates, there were always evil ones here who delighted to 
know of a shipwreck on our shore, because the broken 
cargoes of sugar or clothing or lumber or whatever else 
might drift ashore could be hauled to their homes from the 
beach as prizes of salvage. 

It is said that decoy lights were even put up at Green 
Hill north of Straits Pond, for the villainous purpose of 
imitating Boston Light in order to bring vessels upon the 
Cohasset rocks. 

Mariners have looked upon Cohasseters more than once 
as a set of pirates "as bad as those of Barnegat." 

But to return to our shipbuilding at the Cove. 

In 1787 Levi Tower had the Betsey built for himself, 
a schooner square sterned and single decked as they all 
were, measuring fifty-one tons. In the same year Samuel 
Bates had the Polly built, nearly seventy tons burden, the 
largest up to that date. The next year two more were 
launched for a career of fishing, the Gannett of thirty-five 
tons, for Samuel Bates and others, and the Betsey of fifty- 
four tons, for Captain John Lewis, 

And thus each year, with few exceptions, from one to 
five vessels were built by our Cohasset carpenters. In the 
twenty years following 1789 there were launched forty-six 
vessels, averaging more than two for every year. 

One who strolls about our quiet Cove nowadays can 
scarcely imagine the busy gangs of carpenters who for- 
merly made the air ring with their mallets and saws and 



320 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



heavy timbers. The sharp click of the calker's chisel is 
only a memory now. 

There is an old twisted pear tree now standing in the 
Lawrence Barrett* estate on the north side of the Cove 
where formerly the stems of vessels were set up with keel 
pointing to the water. The ribs were hewn from the oaks 
of our own forests ; oxen had been hauling them winter 
and summer from the hillsides to the shore ; and as they 
were lifted one by one to their places along the keel, the 
people living about the harbor watched the daily growth. 
The noise of planking reached the ears of the whole 
neighborhood, so that the hush of the noon hour, when 
the laborers were at their meals, was the familiar respite 
of every midday. 

Ship carpenters were born here in those days and reared 
to that trade from infancy. 

The launchings were occasions of delight to many who 
might gather to view them ; but especially exhilarating 
were they to those who could stand upon the deck when 
the props were knocked out and when the wooden bulk 
began " to feel the thrill of life along her keel," as she moved 
over the greasy ways into the bosom of the full tide. 

An important shipyard was at the head of the Cove 
wrhere Guild Hall stands. 

There was not much travel in those days along Border 
Street, for there was no bridge over the Gulf into Scitu- 
ate, and the only passing was down to Samuel Bates' 
wharf or to the gristmill and Elisha Doane's wharf. 

The place of the old saw pit, where a man below and a 
man above the timber patiently sawed the whole length 
with a long splitting saw, is now to be pointed out next 
to a ledge of granite at the edge of the road, a few steps 
away from Guild Hall. 

Other shipyards no doubt existed around the Cove and 

* Since the above was written this estate has become the summer home of C. W. 
Barron. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



^21 



up the Gulf nearly as far as Bound Brook, but scarcely 
a vestige now remains.* 



* A list of vessels built at Cohasset from 1789 to 1810 so far as gathered from the 
Enrollment books in the Boston Custom House. Probably others were built which 
do not appear enrolled. 

Master Carpenter. 



Year. 


Name. 


Tons. 


Owner. 


1789 


Federalist 


65 


Sam'l Bates 


1791 


Harriet 


102 


Elisha Doane 


1791 


Susanna 


56 


Sam'l Bates 


1792 


Nichols 


53 


Elisha Doane 


1792 


Dolphin 


58 


Sam'l Bates 


1793 


Brittany 


42 




1793 


Polly 


68 


John Lewis 


1793 


Nantasket 


45 


Sam'l Bates and others 


1793 


Sculpion 


29 


Abraham Tower 


1794 


Hannah 


39 


Sam'l Bates and others 


1794 


Deborah 


64 


Sam'l Bates and others 


1795 


Neptune 


77 


Elisha Doane 


1795 


Four Brothers 


68 




1796 


Priscilia 


66 


Levi Tower 


1796 


Sally 


107 


Sam'l Bates 



This one was 69 feet 6 inches long, 21 feet 2 inches wide, 8 feet 6 inches deep. 
1796 Clara 135 Sam'l Bates 

71 feet 9 inches long, 21 feet 6 inches wide, 10 feet 2 inches deep. 



1797 
1797 
1797 
1797 
1797 
1798 
1798 
1798 
1798 
1799 
1799 
1801 



Elizabeth 

Mary (sloop) 

Almira 

Betsey and Polly 

Rose 

William 

Minerva 

Rebecca 

Sally (sloop) 

Ruth 

Mary 

Three Brothers 



72 
29 

lOI 

57 
71 
22 

103 

621/2 

42 

75 

43 '/a 
151 



Abraham Tower 
Sam'l Bates 
Benjamin Briggs 



Dan"! Bates of Boston 



Sam'l Bates 
Levi Tower 
Luther Stephenson 
Peter Lothrop 

A square-rigged brig named from the three Lothrop brothers, John J., Anselm, 
and Peter. 



1802 Leopard 72 Levi Tower 

1802 Sally 57 Levi Tower 

1802 Mary changed from sloop to schooner 

i8c3 Dexter 

1804 Success 

1805 Lively 
1805 Priscilia 

1805 Ruth 

1806 Lydia 
1806 Betsey 



76y2 


Levi Tower 


79 


Job Turner 


55% 


Job Turner 


52 


Daniel Bates 




Levi Tower 


65 


Several 


fisVa 


Peter Lothrop 



Levi Tower 
Levi Tower 

Luther Stephenson 
Levi Tower 

Adnai Bates 



Sam'l Stockbridge 
James Stoddard 



32 2 HIST OR V OF COHASSE T. 

But what was the purpose of this shipbuilding ? They 
were all small fishing and freighting schooners, less than 
seventy-five feet in length, and nearly all were built for 
Cohasset owners. Indeed, what few were built for other 
owners were more than offset by the schooners owned 
here from other shipyards. It was a thriving fish industry 
that stimulated the growing fleet of schooners in our 
harbor. 

Ever since the year 1737, when our fleet had but eight 
"sail," there was a slow increase in the number of fishing 
craft. By the year 1800 there were Samuel Bates, John 
Lewis, Elisha Doane, Peter Lothrop, Abraham Tower, 
and Levi Tower, each owning a small fleet for himself.* 
Besides these there were single owners who did a smaller 
business. 

Levi Tower had two stores at the Cove besides his 
blacksmith shop in the year 1793, and at the same time 
Samuel Bates had a larger store at his own wharf. From 
these stores their vessels were outfitted for their cruises 
and the families of sailors and of others were supplied. 

The fish that were brought in by the thousands each 
trip during the summer were salted and barreled in the 
fish houses of the owners. Elisha Doane had a fish house 
worth five pounds, as also did John Lewis. 

Besides Samuel Bates' wharf there was in 1793 another 



Year. 


Name. 


Tons. 


Owner. 


Master Carpenter. 


1806 


Hero 


62 


Job Turner 


Sam'l Sylvester 


1806 


Randan 


50 


Levi Tower 


Levi Tower 


1806 


Joanna 


48 


Sam'l Stockbridge 


Sam'l Stockbridge 


1807 


Clara 


44 


Levi Tower 


Sam'l Stockbridge 


1807 


Polly 


36 


Levi Tower 


Levi Tower 


1807 


Mary Ann 


44 


Peter Lothrop 


Adnai Bates 


1807 


Charles Austin 


53 


John B. Turner 


Job Turner 


1807 


Liberty 


85 




Levi Tower 


1808 


Dolphin 


23 


Elisha Doane 


Elisha Merritt 


1810 


Two Sisters 


50 


Abraham Tower 


James Stoddard 



*The fishing property of Captain John Lewis in the year 1796 was about ;i^3,ooo ; 
of Captain Abraham Tower, about ^2,500; Levi Tower, about ^^2,200; Samuel 
Bates, about j^i, 800; Elisha Doane, about ;^i,ooo. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



>23 



belonging with its warehouse to Elisha Doane, worth 
nearly as much as the first. 

The amount of fish taken each year is not recorded 
previous to the catch of 1804. The inspector general's 
report* for the period beginning 1804 can be found in 
the archives at the State House in Boston, and they furnish 
a fair basis for an estimate of the industry preceding those 
years. Probably there were caught and salted not much 
more than a thousand barrels at any one year before 1800; 
but after that year a steady increase was made up to the 
War of 18 12, when in the year 181 1 the climax of four 
thousand one hundred and fifty-nine barrels was reached 
as one year's capture, and they sold at five to nine dollars 
a barrel. 

It was in the year 1809 that the Cohasset catch passed 
beyond that of Hingham, whose capital in the fishing 
business had formerly been too much for our rivalry. The 
most of these fish were mackerel, but several hundred 
barrels of alewives were packed during some years. 

Different grades of mackerel were established, so that 
instead of only one kind there came to be the first, 
second, and third grades in the year 1806. 

Barrels and half barrels both were used in packing, and 
our coopers were kept busy during those years making 



♦Report of 


Inspector General of Fish, Henry Pukkitt. 


Cohasset Inspector — JOHN Beals. 




Mackerel. Brls. Bris. Brls. Hf. brls. 
No. I. No. 2. No. 3. No. I. 


Hf.brIs.Hf. brls. Total 
No. 2. No. 3. Brls. 


Apr. 1804-Jan. 1805 
Alewives 








367 696 21 
70 


1143 


Jan. 1805-Jan. 1806 

Alewives 








258 266 628 99 
118 


I 1320 


„ 1806-Jan. 1807 
„ 1807-Jan. 1808 








260 527 313 194 
325 395 769 150 


5 1200 
13 I I910 


Alewives 
„ 1808-Jan. 1809 

Alewives . 








339 

128 374 756 23 

581 


15 1858 


1809-N0V. 1810 
Nov. 1810-N0V. 1811 
Alewives 








628 304 49a 142 
261 1273 2216 428 
112 10 


34 1512 
131 16 4159 



324 



in STORY OF COHASSET. 



the barrels. The details of this fishing industry, with the 
manufacture of barrels and of salt, will be reserved for 
a later chapter, when over twenty thousand barrels a year 
was the catch of our fleet, and when eighty to a hundred 
schooners were crowded into our Cove during the season. 

Besides these pickled fish, which the inspector was 
required to report, there were cargoes of codfish which 
were caught by our fishermen and not reported by the 
inspector, because codfish were cured by drying and were 
not packed in barrels that might conceal the quality of 
the fish. 

There is no way of ascertaining the amount of codfish 
taken and cured annually previous to the War of 1812, nor 
indeed for much of the subsequent period, for no records 
were kept by either the State or the town. 

We know, however, that from the beginning of New 
England discoveries, before mackerel were thought worthy 
of a hook, codfish by thousands were caught and dried 
along the New England coast for the use of Erance and 
England. The codfish which our fishermen brought 
home to dry in the sun were spread out upon fish flakes 
built upon Bassing Beach, — the beach of the famous 
Threescore Acres. These " flakes " were small plat- 
forms of woven twigs resting upon stakes driven into the 
sand ; and there were acres of them upon Bassing Beach 
at one time, within the memory of men,* holding the 
salted codfish spread open to the sun. 

The place where the flakes stood is now submerged, 
but the remains of the old stakes have been seen in the 
water. 

But there was more than a fishing business done at our 
Cove. It must not be supposed that the vessels built 
here were wholly confined to fishing. Some of the 

♦Captain Elijah Pratt, of Scituate, says that Levi Tower used to send the William 
& Nancy and others as " bankers " for codfish. The schooner used to unload 
upon the steep side of Bassing Beach when he was a small boy. 

The William & Nancy was built 1816. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 325 

larger ones struck out boldly for foreign shores, doing a 
commerce between the West Indies and New England, 
a few of them venturing across the Atlantic into the 
ports of the Old World.* 

The seamen, moreover, who took their first lessons upon 
our fishing craft often developed into mariners able to 
navigate in any waters of the globe. These became in- 
trusted with foreign-going vessels that sailed from Boston, 
and it would be difficult to mention any port of importance 
in the commerce of the ocean that has not been entered 
by some of the sons of Cohasset. 

There are no available documents to furnish a list of 
Cohasset shipmasters who sailed the vessels of other 
owners during the years following the* Revolution and 
preceding the War of 1812; but such vessels as were 
built in Cohasset and registered in Boston for foreign 
voyages can be known. 

The following list begins with the year 1789, the regis- 
ters of preceding years having been destroyed, as we 
already have noted. These have been culled from the 
books in the United States Custom House at Boston 
under the care of George Osgood of Weymouth : — 

LIST OF VESSELS CLEARLVG FROM CUSTOM HOUSE AT BOSTON 

FOR THE FOLLOWING YEARS. BEFORE THE WAR OF 1812. 
Date. Vessel. Owner. Master. 



89. Susannah. 


Samuel Bates. 


David Hayden. 


, Betsey. 


John Lewis. 


Caleb Litchfield. 


, Neptune. 


Elisha Doane. 


Uriah Oakes. 


, Sally. 


Joseph Bates. 


Phineas Smith. 


, Mary. 


Elisha Doane. 


Abner Joy. 


, Eagle. 


John Lewis. 


John Collins. 


50. Elizabeth, 


Abraham Tower. 


Wm. McNeil, Jr. 



* Captain Philip Fox, an English boy who became a Cohasseter. was one of the 
ablest of our foreign-going masters. He commanded the packet ship Herald 
saihng between Boston and Liverpool, and he beat the best record of his time 
seventeen days for a trip in the year 1819. (See Joel Willcutfs diary.) He was 
drowned in the Mediterranean. 



326 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Date. 


Vessel. 


Owner. 


Master. 


I79I. 


Diana. 


John Lewis. 


Elijah Stoddard. 


» 


Susannah. 


Samuel Bates. 


Salisbury Blackmer. 


1794. 


Deborah. 


Samuel Bates. 


Asa Higgins. 


jj 


Betsey. 


John Lewis. 


Judah Bacon. 


>> 


Betsey. 


Levi Tower. 


John Jacob Lothrop. 


1795- 


Becca. 


John Sutton. 


John Grozer. 


5J 


Mason. 


Elisha Doane. 


Obediah Lincoln. 


J> 


Neptune. 


Elisha Doane. 


John Lincoln. 


1796. 


Clara. 


Abraham Tower. 


John J. Lothrop. 


1797- 


Priscilla. 


Levi Tower. 


Anselm Lothrop. 


1798. 


Bethiah. 


Abraham Tower. 


John J. Lothrop. 


1800. 


Mary. 


Elisha Doane. 


Abraham Crowley. 


-■?> 


Elizabeth. 


Levi Tower. 


Cyrus Bryant. 


^j 


Mary. 


Luther Stephenson. 


Luther Stephenson. 


i8oi. 


Harmony. 


Levi Tower. 


Abraham Tower. 


>5 


Arthur. 


Levi Tower. 




>> 


Three Brothers 


. Peter Lothrop. 


Henry Southwick. 


1802. 


Patty. 


Levi Tower. 


George Mann. 


1803. 


Light Horse. 


James Collier. 


James Collier. 


5> 


Columbia. 


Christopher Lincoln 


. Christopher Lincoln. 


1804. 


Success. 


Samuel Stockbridge, 




1805. 


Two Marias. 


Elisha Doane. 


EHsha Bourne. 


J) 


Ruth. 


Levi Tower. 


Ephraim Snow. 


;> 


Sibae. 


Samuel Stockbridge 


. Thomas Pratt. 


181I. 


Triton. 


Levi Tower. 


Aaron Pratt. 


)5 


Sophia. 


Luther Stephenson. 


Benjamin Briggs. 


I8I2. 


Speedwell. 


Levi Tower. 


Henry Snow. 



But fishing and seafaring were not the whole occupa- 
tion, neither were vessels the whole wealth of the town 
at this period. Our farmers also were plodding along the 
highway of success. 

The most extensive owner of farm land and stock was 
Thomas Pratt, upon whom the assessed valuation of more 
than five thousand pounds was made in the year 1796. 

Next to him in farming estate was Aaron Pratt, his 
brother, with about four thousand seven hundred and 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



327 



sixty pounds, and John Pratt, the nephew, with almost as 
much. 

Samuel Bates' real estate valuation was over four thou- 
sand pounds, so that besides his property on the sea he 
was making produce from the land. 

The flocks and herds belonging to farmers were able to 
aggregate in value more than the fleets of our harbor; 
but the part contributed by some was scarcely more than 
the poor man's ewe lamb. 




North Main Street. 
Common on the right. 



Photo, Harriet A. Nickerson, 



The sawmill on Turtle Island and the gristmill at the 
mouth of Bound Brook, besides the Gulf gristmill and 
the Straits Pond gristmill were all making industry and 
producing the means of life. 

Christopher James kept his inn at the center of the 
community, which is now the Norfolk House, and here he 
received an income from occasional travelers and from 
the sale of drink, thus adding to the living which his 



328 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

farm produced, and furnishing an exchange for the gossip 
of idle hours. 

There was an industry then thriving in this town which 
is now rarely seen in farming communities ; it was tan- 
ning. The old John Wheelwright on Turtle Island whom 
we remember as a soldier in the Louisburg expedition of 
1745 was still living at the year 1800, carrying on a tan- 
nery there in Beechwood at the age of eighty years. He 
lived to be ninety-eight years old, and the hollows in his 
tanyard where his vats were dug can still be seen. 

But a more thriving business was the one carried on by 
Francis Lincoln at his tannery at the mouth of Bound 
Brook.* His father. Deacon Uriah Lincoln, had developed 
a good business there at about the time of the Revolution- 
ary War, and now Francis carried it on until he lost the 
sight of one eye and was compelled to abandon the works 
in the year 181 5. 

His old account book from 1802 to the end gives us a 
detail view of his work. In it we find, for example, a long 
list of charges to the shoemaker Obediah Nichols for 
various kinds of leather — calf, sheep, woodchuck, and 
cow. From May, 1802, to May, 1803, the total bill is 

$47-83. 

In March, 1805, four bushels of hair were charged, 
sixty-seven cents. The hair was evidently a by-product 
scraped from skins and sold for making plaster. One of 
the scrapers from this old tannery and two samples f of 
tanned sheepskin are in the town's historical collection. 

Another shoemaker who bought leather here was Joel 
Willcutt, whose little old shop is now standing in C. F. 
Bennett's yard on the north side of Elm Street. 

In April, 1805, Joel Willcutt was charged with 1^1.92 
for "dressing one half a hide," and this hide probably was 
the commodity given to the shoemaker in payment for 

*See the sketch of that neighborhood on p. 216. 
fUsed to cover two books. 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 



329 



work by some one else. Another charge more curious 
was for " currying a pair of boot legs," eight cents ; and 
another, "to a dogskin," thirty-three cents. The frag- 
ment of skin from a calf's head was called a "pate," and 
twenty of these pates were sold for a dollar and sixty- 
seven cents. 

Some idea of the magnitude of this little tannery may 
be gained from its charges to Joshua Loring, the leather 
and harness merchant of Hingham in 1805. Twenty- 
seven sheepskins at forty cents each were charged that 
year and ninety-three sheepskins the next. There was 




Joel WiLLCurr's Cobbling Shop, Elm Street. 
Built 1791. Used as post office 1806 to 1837. 

tanned for the same man one hogskin for a dollar, and it 
must have been used by Joshua Loring in making saddles. 

Another tannery that some persons now remember was 
near the site of the present Masonic building, just across 
James River. Here stood in later years a shop for butch- 
ering, and both industries were of use in the support of 
the townspeople. 

But leavmg the tanneries, all extinct long ago, an inter- 
esting project at Little Harbor merits our attention. 

It was the scheme of Elisha Doane and some others ta 



330 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

reclaim the marsh lands in Little Harbor. It will be 
remembered that some seventy acres were granted to 
the Hingham settlers in the year 1647 and later. It 
will be remembered also that we inferred from the very 
small acreage at present to be found there that the 
ocean had encroached slowly upon the lands of those 
early days. 

The plan was devised to shut out the ocean so that only 
the channels of the harbor would be filled with water. 
This was not the first attempt to shut out the ocean 
from these fertile flats. 

As early as the year 1727-28, March 4, there was pre- 
sented at the town meeting in Hingham "A petition to 
erect a Dam between Great Neck and Beach Islands and 
the meadows adjoining near the middle falls." The peti- 
tion was discussed and dismissed, but it was probably 
revived several years later, for Cuba Dam was built 
where now Cunningham Bridge stands, probably before 
Cohasset became a town. The name Cuba may have been 
given in honor of the capture of Havana by the British 
in the year 1762 under Lord Albemarle. 

Of the several efforts to drain off the water of Little 
Harbor the remains of one abortive attempt are to be 
seen to-day at Sandy Beach. Two rows of posts sticking 
up through the sand have puzzled observing bathers and 
passers-by for many 3^ears. These are the fragments of 
an old canal or sluice, which was dug through Sandy 
Beach to Little Harbor to let out the water, more than 
one hundred years ago. The natural inlet at Cunningham 
Bridge was shut up, as we saw, by Cuba Dam, and this 
artificial waterway was made to let the salt water off from 
the grass-bearing flats. 

The labor was immense, for after the wooden sluice 
was built a ditch about ten feet wide was dug straight up 
the harbor following the natural channel nearly as far as 
the present lawn of Charles S. Bates ; but after all that 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 33 I 

work, there was nothing to be gained. A violent storm 
of the heartless northeast variety packed their sluice full 
of sand, choking the whole scheme in the first winter.* 

But another method was tried by Elisha Doane and his 
colleagues. Long sluice boxes or canals were planned to 
reach from the inside of the dam down to the sea, so that 
all the water of the harbor might be let out so that nearly 




Photo. M.H. Kearny. 

Cunningham Uriugk (tue old wooden one). Outlet ok Little 

Harbor, formerly Cuba Dam. 

Taken from the side of Mohawk Hill. 



one hundred acres could be laid bare to the sun and thus 

could be transformed from a salt marsh to fresh meadows. 

The canal or flume or "trough," as it was variously 

called, had to be made about two hundred feet long in 

* The tradition of this event comes from Caleb Nichols, Sr. A few years ago, 
after the new road had been built along this beach, it settled at a certain place 
so much, that some digging was done to see what was the matter; they found the 
soft place underneath was the old sluice. 



132 



I/IS TORY OF CO HAS SET. 



order to discharge the water. Strong gates at the upper 
end had to be built and hinged so that the pressure of a 
full tide moving up the flume would only close them the 
tighter. 

The great work was begun in the spring of 1804. Ten 
thousand feet of lumber were brought down from Boston 
by Naaman Nichols' schooner, for which transportation he 
received thirty dollars. Laborers, some from Hingham 
and some from Cohasset, dug and tugged at heavy tim- 
bers and stones all that summer. Common laborers got 
two shillings a day — thirty-three and a third cents — and 
carpenters one dollar a day. What food they ate may 
be inferred from the barrels of "mess beef" and of pork 
which were bought in Boston. Our own storekeepers, 
Levi Tower, Zealous Bates, and Christopher James, had 
bills against the proprietors of " Cohasset Meadows & 
Flats " for biscuit, hard bread, potatoes, sugar, rum, 
chocolate, tumblers, and spikes. 

The sugar cost twelve and fourteen cents a pound ; the 
New England rum sixty-seven cents a gallon, and on a 
warm day two quarts was about the least the gang would 
drink. 

The hauling of timbers was done by oxen, and Thomas 
Fearing, of Hingham, used five cattle in carting timber 
from the Cove, 

Many other details of the work are to be seen in the 
vouchers preserved by the grandson of Elisha Doane ; but 
the outcome of it all was the completion of a water course 
through the beach by December of that year, 1804, at a 
cost of $2,107.69. 

The committee in charge of this work was Jacob 
Lewis, Caleb Nichols, James Stephenson, and Joel Will- 
cutt, besides John Leavitt, of Hingham. Several of 
the proprietors of these lands were Hingham people, 
and one interesting bill was by that town. It reads as 
follows : — 



THE FIRST YEARS OF THE REPUBLIC. 333 

Dr 

To the town of Hingham for French and Jay's labor 

42 days at 4 shillings $28.00 

To 72 lbs of beef at 7c pr pound 5.04 

To one shovel — broke — .92 

^3396 

The result of this dam was more than to reclaim the old 
marshes of seventy acres. At least twenty more acres 
were gained, making a total of more than ninety-one acres. 
The company, by taxing themselves about thirty dollars 
an acre, met the expenses and then waited for the meadows 
to bear for them enough grass to reimburse their funds. 
Year by year this land yielded a steady increase, and the 
bright green carpet was seen there gleaming in the sun 
ev^ery spring. It was nearly a half-century before the 
ocean was able to leap over the dam and to destroy the 
meadows. This was done in the terrible storm of 185 i, 
when the old iron lighthouse was carried away. 

When the salt sea filled Little Harbor at that time, the 
canal was choked up so that no water could get out. It 
was a most furious flood that had leaped over the dam, and 
it covered the flats so deeply that a rowboat could 
pass over the fences by the side of Jerusalem Road 
where that road crosses the flats north of Steep Rocks. 
It was a bothersome situation, and the town voted an 
appropriation of $500 to have the dam opened. Through 
the cut in the dam the water flowed out with such a rush 
as to clear away its former passage to the sea, and never 
since that time has the ocean been forbidden its old course.* 

* The following is a list of owners in Cuba Dam meadows for the year 1812 : — 

Names. Acres. Names. Acres. 

Fearing & Stephenson 1.50 John Burbanks 1.58 

Jacob Leavitt 3.09 Captain Levi Tower 7.82 

Gen'l Theoph. Cushing 1.61 Thomas Willcutt 1.37 

Benjamin Barnes .80 Joel Willcutt .57 

Heirs of Spencer Binney 3.50 Hezekiah 1-incoln 3.00 

Elisha Doane 2.58 Captain Abraham Tower 8.75 



334 



HISTORY OF coil ASSET. 



The enterprise at Cuba Dam was one of the many 
which were undertaken during the years of recuperation 
after the Revolution. 

But before Cuba Dam had reached its climax, and be- 
fore the fishing industry had come to full growth, another 
war with England was upon us. The exasperating events 
of that ill-defined War of 1812, at the points where it 
touched our community, will next be followed. 

Names. Acres. Names. Acres. 

Widow Hannah Willcult 

John Wilicutt 

Jonathan Bates 

Rev. Jacob FHnt 

Thomas Bourne 

David Beal 

Peter Nichols 

Widow Hannah James 

Estate of Christopher James 

Estate of Lot Nichols 

Jerome Lincoln 

Widow Sarah Lincoln 

Total, 91-15 

THE FOLLOWING NOTES ABOUT TOWN PAUPERS MAY BE OF 
INTEREST. 

There were four inmates of the almshouse at Hingham who became the legacy 
of Cohasset when first set off as a town in 1770. 

1780, March 20. " Voted that the Poor should all be poot into one house to 
be hiard for that purpose." 

1784, April 15. " Voted that the Selectmen put out the poor Children that are 
under the care of the Town untill they come of age, and give a sum of money with 
them if they think it for the interests of the Town." 

1784, May 17. " Voted that the Poor shall be moved to the Schoolhouse for the 
present. 

" Then reconsidered the above vote and voted to build or purchase a house to 
put the Poor in, which shall be thought most convenient for the interest of the 
Town." 

1787. March 12. " Voted that the Poor of the Town be put out for a year by 
the week to those persons that will keep them cheapest." 

1788. Poor put out as last year. 

1789. Poor put out as last year. 



•38 


Galen James 


2-53 


•38 


Hezekiah Beal 


.68 


•44 


Anselm Lothrop 


.68 


2-73 


Zealous Bates 


2.42 


S-I3 


Thomas Lothrop, Esq. 


.83 


1.68 


Caleb Nichols 


4-85 


3-38 


Aaron Nichols 


1-34 


1. 00 


Ephraim Lincoln 


3.00 


2.01 


Captain John Lothrop 


.82 


13.00 


Captain Nath'l Nichols 


3-75 


1.16 


Levi Tower, Jr. 


1.81 


•58 


T^t^l 





CHAPTER XVI. 

THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1 8 12, 

AFTER the close of the Revolution many of the 
officers and soldiers who returned to their homes, 
kept some of the habits of military drill in companies of 
militia organized under the State laws. 

The citizen soldiers had been the only standing army 
of our colonies previous to our independence. As early 
as the year 1641 the Massachusetts Colony had re- 
quired the " trainband " of every town to be exercised 
eight days of the year, each man with a musket. Trees 
had been left standing on the Common in Hingham for 
the militiamen to dodge behind, in mock warfare with 
Indians. The use of these semi-soldiers in the wars 
against France in our colonies has been already noticed. 

Their service in fighting the battles of the Revolution 
was in some cases most illustrious. They were of course 
much inferior to regular soldiers in the art of obedience, 
for they had a tendency to treat military matters too 
much in the spirit of a town meeting, where every one 
was accustomed "to have his own say." 

During the Revolution our State militia were at first 
the only regular soldiers ; but as soon as Washington was 
appointed general by the Congress at Philadelphia in 
1775, he organized the Continental army. 

The militia forces operated frequently in company with 
the Continentals ; but they were subject to the authority 
of the State and not of the Congress. 

The highest rank obtained by any one from Cohasset 
in our State militia during the Revolution was that of 
a lieutenant colonel, Thomas Lothrop gaining that dis- 
tinction. This man was not, however, an officer in the 



336 HISTOR V OF COHASSE T. 

Continental army. The highest of rank from Cohasset 
in the Continental army were James Hall, who became 
captain lieutenant in the artillery, besides being an aid 
to General Washington, and Noah Nichols, who was also 
a captain of artillery, as we saw at the close of the 
Revolutionary chapter. 

At the end of the war our Cohasset man in the militia 
next in rank to Thomas Lothrop was Job Cushing, com- 
missioned major in 1781, who had been an active captain 
throughout the war in our State forces. This major had 
command in the Second Suffolk Regiment, to which 
several of our neighboring towns belonged. Next to him 
was Captain Nathaniel Nichols, who commanded the 
company which drilled in our own town. His two lieu- 
tenants were Jerome Lincoln and Samuel Bates, all of 
them appointed in 1781. 

The drill and firearms were very stale matters at the 
end of the Revolution, but after several years' rest the 
old condition of the militia in peaceful times returned. 

James Stoddard became a major. First Brigade, First 
Division, in 1789, and Levi Tower captain of our Cohas- 
set company, with Caleb Nichols for his lieutenant. 

The occasional drills* upon our Common or in some 
level field were public events of considerable enjoyment. 
Especially was it interesting when a regiment muster was 
appointed to be held at Cohasset, when other companies 
of the regiment gathered here for larger maneuvers and 
sham battles. 

One of the Revolutionary soldiers who became after- 
wards advanced in militia rank was Jonathan Bates, 
captain in 1796, but commissioned major the next year. 

The affairs of the militia company went along serenely, 
furnishing a social diversion for the men, as well as being 
a perpetual preparation for local defense. 

*In the selectmen's accounts for 1801 the following interesting items occur: 
" Paid officers and soldiers of the Train Band, ;g58.5o. Paid i6}4 lbs Powder for 
Soldiers Training, ^8.29." 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OE 1812. 



One of the lists of the company for the year 1808 has 
been preserved, and it may be of interest to the descend- 
ants of these soldiers of peace : — 



MUSTER ROLL OF CAPTAIN JOHN 

1808. 

Officers' Names. 

Captain John Pratt. 
Lieut. Peter Lothrop. 
Lieut. John Beal. 

Sergeants and Musicians. 

Laban Worrick. 
Laban Bates. 
Samuel Bates. 
Henry Prentice. 
David I, Nichols. 
Thaddeus Lawrence. 

Privates. 

John Bates. 
Levi Tower, Jr. 
Elijah Nicholson. 
John B. Turner. 
Luther Stephenson, Jr. 
Henry Deane. 
Lusitanus Vinal. 
Theophilus Southworth. 
Thomas Harris. 
James Harris. 
Levi Oakes. 
William Payson. 
William Howard, 
James Collier. 
William Whittington. 
Thomas Briggs. 
Festus Litchfield. 
Alexander Stockbridge. 
Ezekiel Pratt. 



PRATT'S COMPANY OF FOOT, 

Samuel Dillano. 
Lothrop Litchfield. 
Abel Kent, Jr. 
Paul L. Nichols. 
Thomas Pratt, Jr. 
David Pratt. 
Henry Pratt. 
Job Cushing, Jr. 
Obadiah Bates. 
Daniel Bates. 
Lincoln Stoddard. 
Job Pratt. 
Phineas Bates. 
Elisha Joy. 
Isaiah Lincoln. 
Jacob Pratt. 
Southworth Pratt. 
John Stephenson. 
William Lincoln. 
Micah Wheelwright. 
Moses Pratt. 
Seth Phiney. 
Benjamin Battles. 
Cummins Lincoln. 
Samuel Lincoln. 
Philip Wheelwright. 
Gershom Wheelwright. 
Jazamiah Bates. 
Alpheus Packard. 
David Whitcom. 
Benjamin Pratt. 
Abner Bates. 
Noah Litchfield. 



338 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Isaiah Litchfield. 
Gershom Pratt. 
Timothy Burbank. 
Levit Burbank. 
John Burbank, Jr. 
Galen James, Jr. 
Asa C. Tower. 
David Gushing. 
Thomas White. 
Ehsha Lincoln. 
Job Souther. 
Clitus Vinal. 
Collins Stephenson. 
Joseph Lincoln. 
George Lincoln. 
John Willcutt, Jr. 
Joseph Joy. 



Caleb Joy. 
John Nichols, Jr. 
Asa Joy, 
Aaron Nichols. 
Levi Nichols. 
Nathaniel Nichols, Jr. 
Seth Beal. 
Christopher Beal. 
Caleb Beal. 
David Stoddard. 
Jonathan Humphry. 
George Hall. 
Obediah Nichols. 
Huton Stockbridge. 
Nichols Tower. 
Elisha Doane, Jr. 



Each of these men was furnished with musket, bayo- 
net, iron rod, scabbard and belt, cartridge box, wire and 
brush, two flints, knapsack, and twenty-four cartridges. 
These arms and ammunition were issued to the soldiers 
for the use of drill in times of peace, but the day was not 
far distant when a serious need of the militia was to be 
felt. The War of 1812 was declared in the month of 
June, and then began the long series of naval contests 
when our coast towns felt the imminent peril of an un- 
protected seaboard. There was coming in that war the 
most serious danger that ever threatened the town. 

The captain of the militia company in 18 12 was the 
energetic John Pratt, but he was promoted to major the 
month before the war began. In his place Peter Lothrop, 
son of Col. Thomas Lothrop, was appointed captain. 

In order to understand a little more clearly the situa- 
tion at the outbreak of our second war with Great Britain, 
it will be necessary to refer to several events which inter- 
ested our town. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1S12. 2)39 

For many years Great Britain had been at war with 
different countries in Europe, and she needed men to fight 
her battles. Americans were many of them excellent 
seamen, and it grew to be the practice of British naval 
officers to board American vessels and to take American 
seamen forcibly into the war service of Great Britain, 
claiming them as British subjects. From 1803 to the 
year 18 10 the list of such impressments reached the alarm- 
ing number of four thousand. 

Against the preposterous claim of the British that all 
who spoke English were presumably subjects of Great 
Britain there was only one defense, and that was a writ- 
ten certificate from the collector of customs that the 
bearer was an American citizen. All our sailors had to 
procure these for their own safety before they ventured 
upon the high seas. 

To make matters still worse for our shipping interests, 
Great Britain forbade our ships having any commerce 
with her enemies. Such a demand enforced by England's 
ubiquitous navy was a severe blow to our marine com- 
merce, and the United States retaliated by prohibiting 
ALL foreign commerce, England included. This Embargo 
was a terrible blow to English merchants, who depended 
upon our markets, and a severe restriction upon our own 
sailing craft. 

Vessels that had done foreign trading with the West 
Indies and elsewhere were laid up in our harbor. A com- 
plete stagnation of commerce followed. 

Several small vessels laden with assorted cargoes es- 
caped from Cohasset in the night in spite of the vigilant 
eyes of the revenue officers, one of whom was stationed 
with his sloop at our harbor. Larger vessels hovered 
outside to receive and to give cargoes to the smaller ones 
that might run into little harbors along the shore. 

In 1809 this Embargo was changed so that American 
vessels were prohibited from intercourse with England 



340 



HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 





^Ki/«-^..*-^^ -^.vc«r/^v ^ V Collecflor for the 

^iftria of Bofton and Charleftowtt, jlo lieteby certiiy, fhat 
c:;^^ ct-iaA, ^-ft2^7 1 <r ^r >«.- — j^n American Seaman, 
aged C^,^i,.^&e-i^i^ - ■ • Years, or thereabouts, of 
the Height of y t^^ Feet c/i'y- Inches, fi^A^. 



Complexion, 



A 



cC — Hair, 



:\ 



,Eyes, 




has this Day produced to me Proof, in tlie Manner diretTred 
by the Adl, intitled, " An Acft for the Relief and Proteftion 
of American Seamen," and purfuant to the faid A(5l, I do 
hereby certify, thit the faidc:>^.^t-^^»,<X> '^^^l^^c^t/''^^ 
is a Citiiten of the United States of America. 






P 



In W'ltncfs ivhereof, I have hereunto fet tay Hand 
and Seal of Office, this ^y^^ 

Day of (Lyt^ct-y , in the Year of our 

Lord i8cM^. < 




'/^X — ^ CoUe^or. 



A certificate of American citizenship signed by General Lincoln for a Cohasset 
sailor. American seamen without such a certificate were in danger of being kid- 
napped by the British before the War of 1812. 

This Isaiah Lincoln was captured during that war. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1812. 34 1 

and France only. Thus some of our Cohasset captains 
and sailors who sailed vessels from Boston to all the ports 
of the world could again put to sea. 

Our schooner Ruth, under Captain Ephraim Snow, sailed 
September i, 1810, from Boston; and Thomas Stoddard, 
■who went in her, tells an experience when they landed at 
Bristol, England, which illustrates the experience of many 
during those years : — 

" While walking with three American mates in St. 
James Square, we were suddenly surrounded by a press 
gang (soldiers drafting men into the British navy). We 
offered no resistance and they kept us till midnight, 
when we had so plied them with Burton ale that they 
were unable to see us as we walked quietly out, leav- 
ing them to their cogitations. They never troubled us 
more." 

But the war came at last. It was declared on June 8, 
1812, and every vessel of ours upon the sea was in danger 
of being captured by British men-of-war. The British 
were rather easy, however, upon our fishermen, for a cargo 
of fish was but small game compared with the freight of 
foreign voyagers. And yet our fishing industry was nearly 
paralyzed. Our catch for the year 18 12 was only about 
one quarter what it was in 1811. 

It was in the summer of the year 18 13 that the 
famous duel of the Chesapeake and Shannon was fought 
off our coast. Up to that time a series of brilliant naval 
combats had brought a world-wide renown to our Ameri- 
can men-of-war. 

The British had whipped every fleet of the sea, but our 
ambitious little navy had conquered them at every duel 
for many months. First in August, 1812, our Con- 
stitution captured the English frigate Guerriere ; the 
next month the Essex captured the Alert ; then the 
Wasp annihilated the Frolic with a carnage so terrible 
that no one was left to pull down the British flag. 



342 



HISTORY OF can ASSET. 



Decatur, who afterwards became our famous admiral, 
sailed the United States into a victory over the Macedo- 
nian before the year was out. 

In February, 1813, Captain Bainbridge took the Java, 
and in March the Peacock was taken by the Hornet.* 

The seas had been swept from Newfoundland to South 
America, from Sandy Hook to the British Channel, by 
our dauntless and victorious little navy. 

During three months they had captured five hundred 
British merchant vessels, besides destroying three frigates 
of war. And this was not all ; for nearly a hundred 
American privateers, the fastest sailing craft of the sea, 
had been swooping down upon British commerce with 
exasperating success, for they captured at least eight hun- 
dred vessels in two years of the war. 

It was therefore confidently expected that when Captain 
Lawrence of the Chesapeake accepted the challenge of 
the British frigate Shannon the victory would be with us. 

Crowds came down that June day of 18 13 to Cohasset 
and to other points of view, hoping to see the fight as the 
vessels sailed out of Boston Harbor for their bloody duel. 
But all were disappointed, for the battle ships drew out of 
sight before the struggle began, and only the boom of 
their cannon reached our shores. Our gallant Captain 
Lawrence fell, but his last words, " Don't give up the 
ship," have never ceased to reverberate his brave spirit. 
Our frigate was doomed, but almost three weeks passed 
by before the people would believe that we had lost the 
day. Lawrence was buried with the honors of war at 
Halifax, whither the captive Chesapeake was taken ; but 
the remains of the hero were afterwards brought to the 
soil of the United States.f 



*The Boston Patriot of August 3, 1813, gives an amusing caricature of this 
naval duel. 

tSee John Bach McMaster's History of the People of the United States from 
the Revolution to the Civil War, Vol. IV, p. 93. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1S12. 343 

The war of the sea kept our fishermen more and more 
from their work. 

That year, 18 13, our total catch was only four hundred 
and fifty-one barrels, about one tenth the amount pre- 
ceding the war. 

The occupations of our men thus driven from the sea 
may be imagined from the diary of one of them, Thomas 
Stoddard : — 

I began to farm it ; went boat fishing in leisure time. Cut 
wood for Capt. Levi Tower in Rice & Leavitt's lots in 3rd 
Division. Had fifty cents a cord for cutting & piling — provisions 
found. The wood was sent to Boston and sold for $13.00 a cord. 
I cleared $3.00 per week — a good business for war times. 

We had an evening Reading Club and a Singing School and 
occasionally a fashionable Soiree called a Bingo. 

During the winter season we felt perfectly safe from the visits, 
of John Bull ; but knowing our exposed and defenseless situation, 
we prepared for more serious events, knowing that should the war 
continue we could not expect to be exempt from its ravages. 

These fears were soon to be realized. By June of 18 14 
a British frigate was harrying the shores of Massachu- 
setts Bay, frightening the fishermen and burning their 
vessels. The selectmen were instructed by vote of the 
town to petition the governor for "two pieces of cannon 
for the defense of the Harbor." Lieutenant Governor 
Cobb (in the absence of Governor Strong) refused the 
request, and recommended the hoisting of a white flag. 

The Massachusetts government was not in sympathy 
with "Mr. Madison's War," as it was contemptuously 
called ; but that seems to us nowadays, as it then seemed 
to our endangered citizens, no excuse for such cowardly 
counsels. By the middle of June a British man-of-war, 
having sent a flotilla of barges to burn the shipping of 
Scituate, sailed for Cohasset on the same errand of de- 
struction. 



344 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Captain Peter Lothrop, roused by a messenger from 
Scituate, leaped from his bed, and without hat or coat, 
mounting a horse without a saddle, rode through our 
village and roused the slumbering inhabitants.* 

The members of the Cohasset militia at that time were 

as follows : — 

Officers' Names. 

Peter Lothrop, Captain. 
John Beal, Lieutenant. 
Newcomb Bates, Ensign. 

Sergeants and Musicians. 
Henry Prentice. Job Cushing, Jr. 

William Whittington. Thaddeus Lawrence. 

John Nichols, 2d. John Willcutt, Jr. 



Obediah Bates. 
Laban Bates. 
Phinehas Bates. 
Jonathan B. Bates. 
Levit Burbank. 
John Burbank, Jr. 
Ephraim Burbank. 
Enos Bates. 
Joshua Bates, Jr. 
Mordicai Bates. 
John Bates, 2d. 
Caleb Beal. 
Abel Beal. 
John Beal, Jr. 
Robert Beal. 
David Battles. 
Joseph Briggs. 
John Creed. 
James C. Doane. 
Henry Doane. 

* Hon. Thomas Russell 



Isaac Tower. 
Privates. 
George Hall. 
Abraham Hall. 
Isaac Hall. 
Samuel Hayward. 
Thomas Harris. 
Thomas James". 
John B. James. 
Josiah James. 
Eleazer James. 
Ebenezer James. 
Asa Joy. 

William Lincoln. 
Isaiah Lincoln. 
Francis M. Lincoln. 
Silas Lincoln. 
George Lincoln. 
Elisha Lincoln, Jr. 
Obediah Lincoln. 
Festus Litchfield. 
Joseph Lincoln. 

s Centennial Address. 



Isaiah Litchfield. 
Charles Litchfield. 
Isaac Lambert. 
John Marble. 
Abner Marble. 
Caleb Nichols, Jr. 
David F. Nichols. 
Warren Nichols. 
Aaron Nichols, Jr. 
Isaac Nichols. 
Nath'l Nichols, 2d. 
Levi Nichols. 
Elias Nichols. 
John Neal. 
Hosea Orcutt. 
Jacob Pratt. 
Job Pratt. 
Henry Pratt. 
Southward Pratt. 
Aaron Pratt, Jr. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OE 1S12. 



345 



Peter Pratt. 
Caleb Pratt, 2d. 
Seth Phinney. 
Nathan Souther. 
Zenas Stoddard. 
Thomas Stoddard. 
William Stutson. 
David Stoddard. 
Lewis Studley. 



Dawes Studley. 
Luther Stephenson. 
Nichols Tower. 
Levi Tower, Jr. 
Asa C. Tower. 
Philip Wheelwright. 
Gershom Wheelwright. 
Joseph P. Wheelwright. 



David Whitcomb. 
Thomas Willcutt. 
Asa Hudson. 
Zenas Lincoln, Jr. 
Ezekiel Wallace. 
Daniel Loihrop. 
Clitus Vinal. 
David Nichols. 



From the diary of Thomas Stoddard* we may read the 
effect of Captain Peter Lothrop's alarm and its sequel. 
He was working upon a salt-making establishment at 
Simons farm in Hull, just over the hill from Straits 
Pond, with the following Cohasset companions : Paul 
Bates, Joseph Lincoln, Francis Lincoln, Levi Oakes, 
Samuel Hayward, and John Nichols, besides several from 
Cape Cod. 

His story reads : — 

We all continued peaceably at our work without interruj^tion 
until the morning of the i6th of June. We had just gone to 
our work after breakfast, when we heard the alarm bells ring at 
Cohasset and Hingham. Soon after, saw a person coming full 
speed on a horse, to us, saying, we must repair immediately, armed 
and equipped, to the Cohasset meeting-house to await further 
orders. The British having landed at Scituate Harbor and burnt 
the vessels, were only awaiting tide Xa, come into Cohasset for the 
like purpose. We secured our tools and were off: all but the 
Cape Cod men ; they refused to go. At noon of that day, we all 

* Thomas Stoddard was born in Cohasset, May 14, 1787. His father, Zenas Stod- 
dard, was a Revolutionary soldier and later a seafaring man. Thomas began to 
learn the carpenter's trade at the age of fifteen, but two years later entered on a 
seafaring life. He was captain of several Cohasset vessels and made many suc- 
cessful voyages to foreign ports. In 1831 he was appointed to the United States 
revenue service and was promoted to the rank of first lieutenant. In this position 
he made many perilous voyages in winter along the coast of New England, giving 
relief to disabled vessels. He remained in the revenue service until 1847, and 
died in Cohasset, on North Main Street, in the house now occupied by Ziba C. 
Small, March 2§, 1854. 



146 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



assembled at the meeting-house at one o'clock, all the enrolled 
men composing one company of militia numbering about one hun- 
dred and thirty: Peter Lothrop, captain; John Beal, ist lieut. ; 
Henry Prentice, 2d lieut. ; every man well equipped with ball, 
cartridge and provision. We were marched to Hominy Point, 
where we found a trench dug about two feet deep, the dirt thrown 
fronting the water. Into this we were marched and ordered to 
remain ready for action : a miserable defense, truly. Here we all 
remained until after sunset : we were then disposed of in the fol- 
lowing order : Capt. Lothrop with fifty men stationed at the head 
of the Cove, Lieut. Beal with forty men stationed as guard on the 
seaboard from Hominy Point around White Head to Sandy Cove, 
Lieut. Prentiss with forty men to relieve guard. A large building 
on White Head erected for a lifeboat house was occupied for a 
guardhouse. 

I was in Lieut. Beal's guard and was stationed near where the 
road merges from the woods on to the beach at White Head, 
where was an iron six-pounder ready loaded, which I was directed 
to fire in case of an alarm. About ten o'clock in the evening, a 
boat from Plymouth came in ; they were from the Bulwark, 74 
guns, and frigate Nymph at anchor off Scituate. These were the 
enemy's ships, which had burnt the vessels at Scituate and were 
now threatening the same to Cohasset. The men in the boat 
came for a sloop, which the enemy had driven into Cohasset, 
having obtained permission of the Commodore to take her to 
Plymouth. They reported the force intended to attack Cohasset 
at 400 men in eleven barges, with ten pieces of artillery. 

During the afternoon and. evening of this day, there arrived at 
the head of the harbor, two companies from Hingham, two com- 
panies from Weymouth, one company of artillery from Hanover, 
one company of artillery from Randolph and the Hingham Rifle 
Company ; which with the Cohasset company, would number 
about six hundred effective men, all under the command of 
Colonel Webb of Weymouth. The out-of-town companies were 
quartered in the best possible manner as circumstances would 
admit. At dawn of the following day, the cannon awakened 
those who might be fortunate enough to get some sleep, however 
few their number might be. The drums beat the reveille, a hasty 
breakfast was prepared and at 6 a.m. the whole camp was in march- 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1812. ^i-M 

ing order for review and inspection. Tliis day was the Sabbath : 
no church bell rang. This day, companies of artillery, infantry 
and riflemen were, constantly coming in from the neighboring 
towns. The hills and high rocks around were covered with anx- 
ious spectators, both male and female. The inhabitants were 
busily employed cooking for the soldiers and packing up their 
valuables in readiness in case the enemy should land to destroy 
the town, which he had threatened in case of resistance. 

At 9 A.M., upwards of twelve hundred men were stationed at 
different points of defense near the Cove. It was now high 
water. The enemy in eleven barges and a sloop tender, hove in 
sight off the Glades. When they had obtained a position so as 
to look into the Cove, they lay on their oars for observation. 
They dispatched the tender to the westward to reconnoiter the 
shore ; several officers landed at the Glades from a barge, also to 
reconnoiter. All was now perfect stillness and anxiety. The 
officers of each company were encouraging the men to fight man- 
fully, and in case any should desert in time of action, they were 
told they would be immediately shot down. The American flag 
was displayed from various posts where the troops were stationed. 
At 1 1 A.M. a signal was made from the Bulwark for the barges to 
return to the ships. The attack was withdrawn in consequence 
of their observing such a superior force to oppose them. 

The troops remained at their respective posts through the day, 
expecting the barges to return the next high water. A strong 
guard was again posted at different points. A strong boom had 
been placed across from Hominy Point to the Bassing Beach and 
every preparation for defense was complete. The town presented 
the appearance of a military camp. Several bands of music were 
occasionally playing, relieved by the drum and fife. The plain 
around the meeting-house was occupied as the grand parade. 

On the morning of the 20th the ships weighed anchor and 
stood to the eastward. All the troops, excepting one Hingham 
and one Weymouth company, returned to their respective homes. 
Capt. Lothrop was ordered to select from his company, twenty 
seafaring men to be stationed at the Cove in charge of the six- 
pounder ; to select their own officers and be subject to his orders. 
The company paraded on the plain and the men were called from 
the ranks, myself being of the number. We marched to the 



148 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



Cove ; our quarters were in the store of Elisha Doane, Esq., on 
his wharf. Our gun was stationed in Dea. Kent's orchard in the 
rear of a strong timber breastwork. We drew daily rations from 
the commissary, Dea. Bourne. We chose Nichols Tower as cap- 
tain, myself as second in command and John Bates as chief 
gunner and such other officers as were necessary. We were exer- 
cised twice each day and once a week were allowed music and 
horses for marching with our gun and small-arms. We contin- 
ued thus to enjoy ourselves for about six weeks, when we were 



ii^BtUi^T^^.OBHHr^' \ / "^B*^ 


Wk 


"^^ 






m ' 



Home of Deacon Bourne. 
The land is now the west corner of the Osgood School lot. The stone horse- 
block has been moved to the other side of the tree. 



released and I went again to work at Simons Farm Salt Works. 
A draft was made from the regiment of our company under the 
command of Capt. Cleverly of Weymouth ; they were stationed 
at Hominy Point until winter set in. 

I continued at the salt works until we had finished about 8,000 
feet. In September we were all discharged from the work and I 
prepared for the coming winter ; always ready at a moment's 



THE MILITIA AXD THE WAR OF 1812. 349 

warning for a march. This fall there was a draft made from Capt. 
Lothrop's company, of ten men. Col. Newcomb Bates was also 
ordered with the men to Fort Independence at Hull, where was 
stationed about one thousand militia, besides two companies of 
U. S. troops; in all 1,200 men. Winter closed the campaign at 
Cohasset ; the company of drafted men were disbanded. We 
housed our gun in Eleazer James' stables and our powder in 
Town Magazine. 

The fishing fleet that summer was unable to stir from 
the harbor. It is said that twenty-seven of the vessels 
were taken at the spread of alarm, up into the Gulf and 
there scuttled and sunk to prevent being burned by the 
enemy. 

The owners felt fortunate with their escape from depre- 
dations when they knew what other towns had lost. 

Wellfleet had to pay $2,000 tribute to escape de- 
struction of her property, Brewster $4,000, and Eastham 
$1,200. 

The loss, however, to our fishermen for that year was 
total. 

The inspector general, Henry Purkitt, in making his 
report to the governor, Caleb Strong, for that year sent 
this doleful letter : — 

Boston, January 16, 1815. 
I regret that the report bears the marks of decay and ruin as 
do all things else in our once happy country. For in the towns of 
Scituate, Cohasset, and Hingham that used to take from sixty to 
eighty thousand dollars' worth of mackerel a year, the last year 
took but three barrels which sold lor twenty-five dollars. 

Of the loss of life by Cohasset seamen in the War of 
18 1 2 not much is known. David Stoddard perished at 
Sackett's Harbor, N. Y. Isaiah Lincoln, another un- 
fortunate, died in the prison at Halifax, N. S. The 
circumstances of his capture are related as follows : " Our 
fishing schooner Nancy had started out on a risky voyage 



350 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

in September of that year, 1814, but she was captured by 
the British. Captain Ezekiel Wallace said to the British 
officer who boarded her, 'You don't want us, we 're nothing 
but poor fishermen,' but the officer said, ' I 've seen you 
in Liverpool captain of a vessel ; I want you.' Wallace and 
his companions, including Isaiah Lincoln, had to go as 
prisoners of war to Halifax, after two of the crew, Brown and 
Litchfield, had been set ashore at Plymouth, Mass. Wallace 
returned the next April after the war was ended, bringing 
poor Lincoln's pocketbook and telling how the unfortu- 
nate fisherman had perished last November in the lousy 
dungeon at Halifax."* 

Another capture of a Cohasset vessel was the little 
packet sailing between here and Boston. She had on 
board a cargo of fish in barrels packed for the Boston 
market. The skipper, John Wilson, had no defense 
against the British man-of-war and was compelled to sur- 
render; but the British had little use for such a cargo, 
and they allowed the owner of it, Levi Tower, to redeem 
the vessel by paying a sum of money. When she was 
being unloaded at the wharf in Boston a marine's cut- 
lass was found upon the deck between some of the barrels, 
where the British owner had lost it when rummaging 
through the cargo. The cutlass is now kept as a memento 
by the grandson of Captain John Wilson. 

But the end of that unseemly war was reached at last. 
At Christmas of the year 18 14, in Ghent, Belgium, the 
terms of peace were made ; but the news did not reach 
us until the middle of January, 181 5. Thomas Stoddard 
describes the event as follows: — . 

In Cohasset the first news of Peace was the roar of cannon. 
Commencing at Boston and as fast as the fleetest horse could 
run, the roar of guns spread East, West, North and South. The 
day was still and clear ; the ground covered with snow, in some 
places ten feet deep. 

*See Lincoln's certificate, p. 340. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1812. 



5^ 



Myself in company with my friend, John Bates and several 
others, had been to mill and were returning home about noon. 
We heard the guns at Boston, Charlestown, Marblehead, Salem 
and Beverly Roxbury, Dorchester, and as fast as the news could 
be brought, at Hingham. 

I had, in haste, taken my dinner and was going to Uncle 
David Beal's shop (a place for news), when I saw a horse and 
sleigh with Capt. Elijah Nickerson and Col. Newcomb Bates 
driving full speed from Hingham, shouting — Peace! Peace! I 
gave the joyful tidings at the shop window and started full run 







Fhoto, Octavius II. Reamy. 

Summer Street in Winter, looking East. 



down town, hallooing : Peace ! When I arrived at James' stable, 
I found the door blocked up with a snow bank. I went into the 
house, got a shovel and commenced clearing the snow. The 
people soon began to collect ; which alarmed many people in 
the neighborhood. Many of them actually asked the passers-by 
where the British had landed, thinking they were soon to be 
burnt out. So little did they dream of Peace ! We got out our 
gun and soon told them the news. 



352 ins TOR V OF CO II A SSE T. 

The rigors of winter prevented that activity and stir of business 
which would have otherwise occurred on the reception of the 
joyful news. 

On the 2 2d of February the celebration of the return of peace 
and the anniversary of the birthday of the immortal Washington, 
combined by previous arrangement, the inhabitants through our 
land observed as a day of public rejoicing. 

In Cohasset, the morning was ushered in by the discharge of 
cannon and ringing of bells. At eleven o'clock the inhabitants 
assembled at the meeting-house, where prayers were offered and 
a very appropriate and highly interesting address was delivered 
by the Rev. Jacob Flint, our beloved pastor. Several pieces of 
music prepared for the occasion, were sung by the choir. A 
procession was then formed of the male inhabitants (except 
boys) and marched around the Town Common to the Academy 
Hall, where two tables the entire length of the hall were loaded 
with every good thing which could possibly be procured. The 
hall was tastefully decorated vvith evergreens and flags ; the por- 
traits of Washington, Hancock and Adams hung in conspicuous 
places and the hall was filled to overflowing. 

Our Reverend Pastor asked a blessing on the occasion; per- 
fect harmony prevailed throughout. Thirteen most excellent 
toasts had been prepared by a committee appointed for the pur- 
pose and when the first toast was announced, a salute of thirteen 
guns from our gun commenced and ended with the thirteenth 
toast. Many volunteers [toasts] were then offered and the com- 
pany dispersed highly pleased and finished the day in mutual 
congratulations. 

In the evening a splendid ball at the hall closed the scene. 
Thus closed the greatest festival this town has ever witnessed. 

Now commenced a new era. The implements of war were 
laid aside and Peace, joyful Peace now animated all class of 
citizens. 

That spring our dismantled vessels were again fitted out 
for their voyages, as many as possible, and their industry 
commenced the steady increase which lasted for many 
years. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1812. 353 

Cohasset was never so dangerously near to the furies of 
war as it was on June 17, 18 14, when the British frigates 
lay off our harbor and eleven barges of British soldiers 
attempted to destroy our town. The resistance which met 
the enemy was not too severely taxed, but it showed 
itself in such a degree as to warrant a fair confidence in 
our spirit of self-defense. 

The militia training was still continued with about two 
regular drills each year, one in May before the fishing 
vessels sailed, and the other in October when the men 
were home again. Musters for the brigade or the division 
to which the Cohasset company belonged were held in 
Hingham, Quincy, Dedham, and elsewhere. Our officers 
were much interested in these events, for promotion and 
efficiency could be gained upon these larger military fields. 
The guns were kept by the soldiers each for himself, who 
reported for inspection with their ammunition every 
May. The town's stock of powder was kept in a little 
red house upon a ledge* in a field upon Eleazer James' 
lane about six hundred feet southwest of the present rail- 
way station. 

The place for drilling was naturally the Common ; but 
the marchings used to take them all over the town, and it 
is said that they usually got very thirsty in the neighbor- 
hood of "grog shops." 

One red-letter day for the militia was when a general 
muster was held at Cohasset about seventy-five years ago. 
The " Rifle Greens " from Hingham were one of the visit- 
ing companies, and the different companies vied with each 
other in the skill of military movements. It took place in 
what was called Barker's Field, on the south side of Sohier 
Street, where Ripley Road has since been cut through. 
The fences and road and fields were crowded with the 
townspeople, who came miles to see it. It is doubtful 
whether a single boy of the town, big enough to toddle, 

♦Behind the present home of Patrick Downs. 



354 ^^^ ^^^^ ^ ^^ COHA SSE T. 

could be kept away on that day. One of the boys* of 
that time who recently died, remembers the occasion when 
he wore his little nankeen frock and was horrified by the 
accident of a man's hand being blown off. 

That was probably the last general muster ever held in 
Cohasset, for on April 24, 1840, the State militia was all 
reorganized, and at the present day there are but a half- 
dozen Cohasset young men in the militia. 

A LIST OF COHASSET MEN WHO WERE COMMISSIONED IN THE 

STATE MILITIA SUBSEQUENT TO THE REVOLUTION 

UP TO THE REORGANIZATION IN 1840. 

COLONEL. 
Newcomb Bates. April 21, 1823— April 26, 1825. Discharged. 

LIEUTENANT COLONEL. 
Newcomb Bates. June 2, 1820 — April 21, 1823, Promoted. 

MAJORS. 
Jonathan Bates. May 18, 1797 — 
James Stoddard. May 27, 1789 — 

John Pratt. May 28, 1812 — April 30, 1814. Discharged. 
Job Gushing. July i, 1781 — 
Newcomb Bates. May 11, 1819— June 2, 1820. Promoted. 

CAPTAINS. 

Levi Tower. October 7, 1789 — 

Jonathan Bates. May 16, 1796 — May 18, 1797. Promoted. 

Bela Bates. August 26, 1797 — 

John Pratt. April 9, 1806 — May 28, 1812. Promoted. 

Nathaniel Nichols. July i, 1781— 

Martin Lincoln. June 17, 1828— March 18, 1830. Discharged. 

David Tower. April 14, 1830 — May 4, 1832. Discharged. 

Levi Nichols. July 12, 1819— March 12, 1822. Discharged. 

Nichols Towner. March 25, 1822 — April 24, 1823. Discharged. 

Abraham H. Tower. May 31, 1823— February 27, 1828. Discharged. 

Newcomb Bates. May 16, 1815— May ii, 1819. Promoted. 

Peter Loth ROP. August 31, 1812— April 17, 1815. Discharged. 

LIEUTENANTS. 
Bela Bates. May 16, 1796 — August 26, 1797. Promoted. 
Caleb Nichols. October 7, 1789 — 

John Pratt. August 26, 1797 — April 9, 1806. Promoted. 
Jeorum Lincoln. July i, 1781 — 
Samuel Bates. July i, 1781— 

♦George Bates, born 1815. 



THE MILITIA AND THE WAR OF 1812. 355 

David Tower. June 17, 1828— April 14, 1830. Promoted. 
WlLLARD B'UNT. May 4, 183C3 — April 2, 1835. Discharged. 
Abraham H. Tower. March 20, 1823— May 31, 1823. Promoted. 
Martin Lincoln. May 31, 1823 — June 17, 1828. Promoted. 
James C. Doane. March 25, 1822— February 5, 1823. Discharged. 
Nichols Tower, July 12, 1819— March 25, 1822. Promoted. 
Henry Prentice. May 16, 1815— May 10, 1816. Discharged. 
Levi Nichols. June 4, 1816— July 12, 1819. Promoted. 
Peter Loth ROP. April 9, 1806— August 31, 1812. Promoted, 
John Beal. August 31, 1812 — May 3, 1815. Discharged. 

ENSIGNS. 
Thomas Bourne. May 24, 1790 — 

Noah C. Bailey. June 17, 1828— September 17, 1833. Discharged. 
Abraham H. Tower. March 25, 1822— March 20, 1823. Pro7tioted. 
Martin Lincoln. March 20, 1823 — May 31, 1823. Promoted. 
James C. Doane. July 12, 1819— March 25, 1822. Promoted. 
John Barnes. May 31, 1823— August 29, 1826. Discharged. 
David Tower. October 18, 1826— June 17, 1828. Promoted. 
Levi Nichols. May 16, 1815— June4, 1816. Promoted. 
Newcomb Bates. August 31, 1812— May 16, 1815. Promoted. 
John Beal. April 9, 1806 — August 31, 1812. Promoted. 
John Prait. May 16, 1796— April 9, 1806. Promoted. 
Peter Lothrop, Jr. August 26, 1797 — 

SURGEON'S MATE. 
EzEKiEL Pratt. November i, 1809— February 2, 1816. Discharged- 

PAYMASTER. 
Job Tower. October i, 1824— September 23, 1830. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE town's church AND ITS DIVORCE. 

IN dealing with the two wars and the daily industries 
of the town we have neglected two important sources 
of civic power, the church and the school. 

Some reference to them was made in the establishment 
of precinct autonomy in the year 1717, but a whole cen- 
tury has intervened between that year and the years fol- 
lowing the War of 18 1 2. 

During that century the church continued to nourish 
the spiritual powers of the people, with a slow advance 
in the methods of supplying religious wants. The town 
itself in the beginning undertook the task of providing for 
this element in human nature. It secured by a general 
contribution of property holders a meeting-house, placed 
upon public land. In its precinct meetings committees 
were appointed to secure preachers, and the expenses were 
paid out of the public treasury by votes of the precinct. 
These expenses were more than all other expenses com- 
bined, and yet the question seems never to have been 
raised whether this religious function really belonged to 
the precinct business. 

For four years, until December 13, 1721, the precinct 
carried on worship without the existence of any church, 
and at that date there were only seven men besides the 
pastor who took the vows of a Christian covenant. These 
men were not elected by the precinct to take charge 
of its religious interests, for that responsibility was 
supposed to belong to the whole community whether 
members of the church or not. 

For fifty-three years the main business of the precinct 

356 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 357 

meetings was to care for the public worship. School 
matters were much smaller — perhaps one quarter as 
much money being expended on them. 

Because of the large proportion of church business 
done by the precinct, it was frequently called a " parish " 
or "society"; but the precinct was always a political and 
not a religious organization. In the exercise of its two 
most important affairs — the church and the school — it 
may be well to note first the management of the church, 
and afterwards that of the school. 

The first pastor, Nehemiah Hobart, was ordained, as we 
saw, December 13, 172 1, in a meeting-house upon the pub- 
lic land, the occasion being a public festival paid for by 
the precinct taxes. 

The house had no pews, no carpet, no lamps, no organ, 
no tapestry ; the seats were only benches and the pulpit 
a plain box high enough to make the hearers look up. 
The galleries reached across three sides, and their floors 
were slanted towards the middle of the house. Indians 
and negroes, whether slaves or free, could occupy these 
upper places with any others who might stray into them, 
while the more dignified men and women sat upon benches 
on the main floor, the women on one side, the men on the 
other side of the middle aisle. 

Small windows of diamond-shaped panes held together 
by strips of lead — these brought from England — were 
placed in the outside walls. They were opened for air in 
the summer during the service, but in the winter they 
were nailed fast. 

A janitor was first chosen in the year 1720 to care for 
this edifice at a salary of fifteen shillings, not quite four 
dollars; but for this sum he had "to get the casements 
hung, and glass mended, besides fastening the doors," 
sweeping once every two weeks. 

There was no bell to be rung, but people had plenty of 
time, and upon Sunday morning, when they saw their 



358 



HISTORY OF coil ASSET. 



neighbors walking along the middle of the road or across 
pastures towards the meeting-house, they all came to- 
gether at some time between ten and eleven o'clock to 
their leisurely service. The pastor came to the church 
from his house across the street after the people had 
gathered, and mounted the stairs into his pulpit, while the 
worshipers settled upon their accustomed seats. 

There were no responsive readings, no anthems by a 
choir, and for several years little if any singing by the 
congregation. The pastor read sufficiently long passages 
of Scripture with comments or illustrations, and then 
while all stood up, a prayer was offered for all the needs of 
the parish as the pastor might conceive their importance. 
The sermon then followed, timed by an hourglass that 
the minister set up on the pulpit ; and while the sand was 
trickling through from top to bottom the minister was 
reading with more or less vehemence the product of his 
pen and heart during the week just ended. The people 
were able to find many suggestions in the sermon to 
quicken their moral purpose, to enlarge their faith, and to 
open their windows of hope. Their demands were not 
severe, and the minister's training, however meager it 
might seem to people nowadays, was quite sufficient for 
the congregation, very few of whom had received as much 
schooling as our present grammar school affords. 

After the morning service an hour or more of intermis- 
sion gave time for the people living near, to get to their 
homes for a luncheon, but the people from Lincoln's Mill, 
from Beechwood, and from Jerusalem, as they called the 
neighborhood of Hull Street, had to take their luncheons 
in the meeting-house if they remained until the afternoon 
service. 

The salary of the first pastor was nearly one hundred 
and thirty pounds in the year 1722, and it grew to be 
only one hundred and eighty pounds in the nineteen years 
of his ministry. He was a faithful pastor and gathered 



THE I'OWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 359 

into the membership of the church seventy-seven persons, 
besides performing all the general ministrations of the 
parish. He died in the forty-third year of his age, 1740, 
and was buried in the Central Cemetery. He never saw 
the meeting-house now upon the Common, for it was not 
built until 1747. 

Neither did the second pastor see more than the little 
old meeting-house, for only five years were allowed to him 
in his unfortunate * pastorate. Rev. John Fowle was 
ordained December 31, 1741, and dismissed in 1746, the 
year before the new meeting-house was built. The trouble 
during his last year of service was submitted to five 
referees outside of the parish, and a committee of three 
were appointed to present to them the case for the pre- 
cinct against Mr. Fowle. 

When this trouble was ended by the dismission of Rev. 
John Fowle, the precinct began to build the larger meet- 
ing-house which we see at present upon the Common, a 
few rods north of the old one. 

It was a plain house forty-five feet by sixty feet, with 
no steeple and no porch, the pulpit being built where it 
now is against the long wall on the east side. A belfry 
was built upon the roof at the north end, but no bell was 
put into it for several years. 

Pews were put in at first by a number of persons who 
paid in all, one half of the costf of the building for their 
pew privileges. 

They were to build their own pews upon the space 
deeded to them, which is called "ground" in the old 
documents, but means only floor space, for the same sort 
of "ground" was deeded by the precinct for pews in the 
gallery. The ownership of these pews by private parties 
was a long step taken by religious matters out of the hands 
of the precinct. 

* He is supposed to have become mentally deranged. 

tThe total cost of the building was ^3,975 14^.3^^. of their depreciated currency. 
(See Precinct Records, p. 77.) 



360 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

The precinct thus became only half owner of the 
house ; at least it assumed only half the expense of 
building it. The pew owners thus voluntarily invested 
their means in a religious enterprise which some others of 
the precinct were voluntarily abandoning. It is true that 
ministerial taxes still had to be paid by all of the precinct, 
whether they participated in the worship or not, but there 
were many who felt that the conducting of religious ser- 
vices was not so necessary a part of the precinct business 
as it formerly had seemed. The owners of these square 
pews or pens were manifestly more interested in the 
affairs of public worship than were those who had invested 
no money. 

The pew holders thus constituted a ring or com- 
pany which began to grow into what was called an 
"ecclesiastical society." Some of them were also mem- 
bers of the covenant church, which was concerned more 
deeply with the spiritual factors involved in public wor- 
ship. 

At about this time, 1748, the people in Rocky Nook, 
that is, the region of Hull Street, petitioned* both the 
precinct and the General Court to be allowed to withdraw 
from the precinct. Perhaps the new building seemed too 
big a burden for them since it was too far away for them 
to attend service easily. 

At any account, the petition indicates a growing un- 
willingness upon the part of some to support the precinct 
in its religious affairs. The pastor, John Brown, ordained 
September 2, 1747, was a strong man with large ideas of 
citizenship ; he was well fitted, therefore, to restrain the 
precinct from its tendency to drop off its religious func- 
tions. But this tendency v/as inevitable ; and before the 
pastorate was ended Rev. John Brown was subjected to a 
tax (1782) just as any other citizen, — a thing never done 
before with the precinct's minister, and proving that the 

*See p. 269, in chapter on " Separation from Hingham." 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 36 I 

precinct business was to be quite separate from the parish 
business. 

During the forty-five years of Rev. John Brown's pas- 
torate one hundred and thirty-six persons were admitted 
to church communion, and several changes in the service 
as well as in the building were made. 

The janitor's work in the year 1749 included the duty 
" to clear y'' dogs out of y" House every Sabbath." 

The plastering was finished in the year 1750, and new 
pews were then put in. 

Benches, or '* seatets " as they were called, were built in 
the spaces left around the pews, until the "ground" 
might be sold for another pew, when the benches were 
taken out. Half the proceeds of these sales were given 
to the original pew proprietors who bore half the expense 
of the house. The new pews were required, furthermore, 
to be like the ones already built. 

Six new pew "grounds" were marked out in the front 
gallery and were sold as follows : " Prince Joy bid off the 
pew next to y women's stairs at 13 pounds old tenor;* 
Samuel Gushing 3rd from the women's stairs 16 pounds ; 
Nehemiah Leavitt 4th 17 pounds; Francis Lincoln 5th 
15 pounds ; Micah Jepson y*" 6th next to y" stairs in y"' 
men's gallery 13 pounds." 

Seventeen years later, in the year 1767, when a two- 
story porch was added at the front of the house, there 
was more pew "ground " made in the church ; for the old 
stairs leading to the gallery on both sides were taken 
away, and two entrances to the gallery were provided in 
the upper part of the porch. The pew "ground" thus 
gained below and above was given to the builders of the 
porch in payment. Whether the building was painted at 
first is doubtful ; at least they voted fiot to paint it in the 
year 1762. 

A small bell to call the worshipers was long desired by 

*One pound old tenor in 1752 was equal to .135 pound. 



362 illS TORY OF COHA SSE T. 

some, and finally, in the year 1761, several persons by a 
subscription purchased a bell, which was hung in the little 
tower at the north end of the roof. The precinct thus 
adopted the novelty, and six years later, 1767, they ordered 
it to be enlarged by remelting and adding enough to bring 
the weight to six hundred pounds. 

Even in regulating the order of service the voice of 
the precinct ruled, as shown by the vote in 1767: "The 
question was put whether the reading Line by Line in our 
Singing in Divine Worship should be omitted for the 
future: Passed in the Negative." Thus they held a little 
longer to that old method ; the deacon would read a line 
from a psalm and then the congregation would sing it 
according to some tune before the next line was given. 

A few of the people had books in which the psalms 
were printed in the form of rhymes, and in the back 
leaves of the book there were thirty-seven different tunes 
to which the psalms or other verses could be sung. 

Some of the tunes are still used in our churches ; for 
example, Penitential Hymn, Veni Creator, Cambridge, 
Sabbath, York, etc. 

The effect of rendering the psalms in rhyme may be 
seen from the twenty-third psalm, which appears in the 
following disguise : — * 

The Lord to me a shepherd is, 

Want therefore shall not L 
He in the folds of tender grass. 

Doth make me down to lie. 

He leads me to the waters still ; 

Restore my soul doth he. 
In paths of righteousness he will. 

For his name's sake lead me. 

*The book used is now owned by A. H. Tower, and was formerly owned 
(1742) by Rebecca Allyn, daughter of James AUyn. The book was printed in 
London in 1725. 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 363 

In valley of death's shade although 

I walk, I '11 fear none ill : 
For thou me with thy rod also 

Thy staff me comfort will. 

Thou hast 'fore me a Table spread, 

In presence of my foes 
Thou dost anoint with oyle mine head. 

My cup it overflows. 

Goodness and mercy my days all 

Shall surely follow me : 
And in the Lord's house dwell I shall 

So long as days shall be. 

Harmony in singing was much desired by the more 
ambitious ones, and it was partially procured by getting 
the singers to sit nearer together. 

In the year 1771, when we had become a town, it was 
ordered that "the Singers should sett in those two hind 
seats in the body of the Meeting-house, the Women's 
side." 

This move was so popular that another seat was added 
the next month by putting them closer together. 

Three years later, 1774, the town again regulated its 
worship by a vote "not to omit the portion of Psalms 
read by the Deacons in time of Divine Service." Thus 
both in externals and internals the town provided public 
worship. 

The next year, 1775, the noon intermission was regu- 
lated by vote to be two hours long in the summer from 
the first Sunday in April to the first Sunday in October. 
The rest of the year the intermission was to be but one 
hour long. 

In 1781 the singers asked to be allowed to sit in the 
front gallery, but they were not permitted to do so. 
They gained their purpose, however, at last, for seven 
years later, in 1788, they had evidently moved into the 



364 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



gallery ; and " it was voted to sell the ground in the 
meeting-house formerly occupied by singers." 

It was probably in this period of musical progress that 
the violin and bass viol were introduced into the worship. 

In 1 77 1 Isaac Lincoln and others who came from a 
distance were allowed " to set up a horse house near the 
meeting-house." Horse-blocks to aid the horseback 
riders in mounting were for many years standing at both 
corners of the east side of the meeting-house. 

The salary of the pastor always included a gift " for 
settlement " of several hundred pounds to be paid in the 
first three or four years. Rev. John Brown's was ^400 
for settlement, paid in four years, besides an annual 
salary of £,l^o. Both of these were old tenor terms, 
which meant at this time about one sixth of what was 
stated.* 

Half of the pay was to be " by Indian Corn and Rye 
at fifteen shillings per bushel ; the other half by beef at 
tenpence per pound." 

The precinct assessors had to state for each year the 
amount they could raise, and it varied in the course of Mr. 
Brown's forty-five years from ^^56 35'. 9^. in the year 
1754 to ^10 1 6s. 8d. in the year 1786. 

The stove wood for the pastor was provided annually 
by the assessors, and it was no small chore, judging by the 
amount used ; for Mr. Brown demanded for his first three 
years "twenty cords of merchantable wood annually." 

The tithingman, now made familiar to us by the oddity 
of the notion, was a town officer to preserve order in the 
town's public worship. John Orcutt was an appointee from 
the Hingham town meeting in 1750 and other years, and 

*This depreciation of the old issue of bills made long contracts unfortunate. 

In 1753 the town refused " to grant a further allowance to Isaac Lincoln for 
maintaining the bridge over Bound Brook for twenty years past — in consideration 
of the depreciation of the money." 

Also John Joy, for keeping an Indian woman (pauper) in her last illness, was 
not allowed extra pay on account of the depreciation. 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 365 

after we became a town we appointed one ourselves, 
the incumbent for the year 1775 being John Burbank. 

Of many other details of church life we have not room 
to speak.* The general progress in the quality of worship 
has been intimated. Also we have noted the tendency of 
the town to allow its public worship to become a smaller 
proportion of its concerns. Those who were unwilling to 
support heartily the religious functions made the taxes so 
hard to collect that in the year 1792 the assessors were 
allowed to make a separate bill of the ministerial tax, and 
a separate collector was appointed to collect it. The first 
was Jerome Lincoln, and his pay was fourpence on every 
pound collected. The Beechwood people and those at 
Jerusalem were unwilling, some of them, to pay for services 
so far away from their homes, and many of them were 
absent from the worship. 

Nevertheless, the meeting-house being town property 
and the place for holding town meetings, they were all 
concerned in the repairs and improvements of the build- 
ing, whether they supported the worship or not. A steeple 
was desired by some to hold a new bell f in 1791 ; but the 
bell was hung in the old tower, and its first use was to 
toll the death of Rev. John Brown, October 25, 1791.$ 
But the steeple came to be built in eight years more, says 
an old account book of Caleb Nichols, carpenter, at a cost 
of "four hundred dollars." 

* The following incident of church life a century ago is worth noting : — 

Mrs. Elisha Doane, who had aristocratic tastes, indulged in a beaver poke bon- 
net with white nodding plumes. Three young ladies with some social ambitions 
determined to imitate the style, hoping to make a stunning impression some Sab- 
bath morning. But there were several young men in the town who discovered their 
plans and conspired to humiliate the young ladies. They raised a subscription 
and purchased one of the monstrous bonnets and easily persuaded a negro serv- 
ant named Zylph, a public character, to wear it to church. The buxom negress 
took a conspicuous place in the gallery, and her plumes nodded before the eyes of 
all, to her manifest delight. But the poor young ladies who saw their own efforts so 
cheapened never recovered their pride enough to wear their bonnets a second time. 

t Perhaps made by Paul Revere. 

J See Joel Willcutt's diary. 



;66 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



The next minister, Josiah C. Shaw, was called in 1792 
by a method that showed still further the separation of the 
town from the church. 




First Parish Pulpit, Sounding Board, Draperies, etc. 
Rev. Joseph Osgood, D.D., in his familiar place. 



We read in the town records that a m.eeting of the 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 367 

"church " was held which decided to call " Mr. Josiah C. 
Shaw" to its ministry, seventeen members being present. 
Immediately afterwards on the same day the town "voted 
to concur with the church in giving Mr. Shaw a call " at 
one hundred pounds a year salary, with a bonus of one 
hundred pounds more for settlement. When the new 
minister was ordained, October, 1792, the town paid for 
the ordination dinner, though the church called the council. 
Thus a distinct cooperation was expressed between the 
ecclesiastical body and the political. 

After the unpleasant termination of Mr. Shaw's pastorate 
four years later (June 3, 1796), the church and the town 
again united in calling a minister. Rev. Jacob Flint, 
December 18, 1797. 

This was the last pastorate under the old regime of the 
town's authority in religious matters. Before his thirty- 
seven years of ministry were finished two other churches 
had been planted within the town, without the need of any 
concurrence by the votes of a town meeting — simply by 
the rights of citizens to unite in the form of a church accord- 
ing to their own preference. 

The first of these two churches was formed in the com- 
munity called Jerusalem, at the northern part of the town. 
The gradual alienation of that section from the old 
church on account of its three miles distance has been 
already noted. The large number who did not attend 
church at all, impressed the more devout people of that 
community, and they attempted to improve matters by 
holding gospel services in private houses. 

Some Methodist itinerant preachers, coming at inter- 
vals of a fortnight or a month, succeeded in organizing a 
church, December 17, 1818.* The Methodist church of 
Hingham mothered this new one; indeed, all the inhab- 
itants on the west side of the street — Hull Street — were 
as now citizens of Hingham. Their first little meeting- 

* In the History of Norfolk County, Rev. Joseph Osgood sets the date 1817. 



368 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



house was built in the spring of 1823. Another which 
yet stands was dedicated September 3, 1845. 

This Methodist church did not encounter the severe 
trials that might have been predicted for a church that 
should endeavor to divide the one parish of the town. 
Those trials were reserved for the center of the town, 
where the people who must form a new parish must seri- 
ously cut into the prerogatives of the old parish. 

To relate the circumstances of that painful division of 




Methodist Church, Hull Street. 



Photo, narriet A. Nickerson. 

Built 1845. 



This building has been called the Huckleberry Church because the devoted 
women raised so much money to build it by picking huckleberries. 



the year 1824 in a way satisfactory to all prejudices would 
be impossible, but it was an event of so great significance 
and excitement to the town as to merit rehearsal. 

At the closing period of the eighteenth century the 
religious life of New England was at a low ebb. We have 
seen that in our own community the amount of money 
spent upon religious services in 1797 was considerably 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 369 

less than was spent eighty years before, when we first 
became a precinct, in 17 17. Furthermore, in that eighty 
years our population had been quadrupled and our other 
expenditures multiplied several times. The steady de- 
crease of religious support in its proportion to other work 
was marked, and the preaching became more perfunctory 
as the town grew more unwilling to support it. 

At the opening of the new century there were many 
persons throughout New England as well as in Cohasset 
who began to exert themselves in a more strenuous reli- 
gious effort. The result of the effort was to bring to light 
a profound difference of view in regard to the Christian 
religion. Many churches in Boston and its neighbor- 
hood repudiated the orthodox doctrines of the nature 
of Christ, of the nature of men, and of the meaning of 
salvation. 

These became known after some time as Unitarians for 
their most distinguishing opposition, that against the doc- 
trine of the Trinity. 

The more strenuous adherents to the Calvinistic theol- 
ogy found it necessary in many communities to build new 
churches for themselves, because the majority of the 
parish kept for their minister a man who repudiated 
orthodoxy. 

In Cohasset the pastor during those years of contro- 
versy was Rev. Jacob Flint. His affiliation was obviously 
with the Unitarians, as may be seen by several passages 
in his "Century Discourses." * 

There were several persons in the town who were so 
much dissatisfied with the pastor of the town's church 
that they used their influence to procure preaching serv- 
ices of their own. They established a Bible Reading 

* Page 8 in a note he says of Rev. Nehemiah Hobart : " It would seem from his 
words that he did not consider Jesus Christ equal with the Father, nor the Holy 
Spirit anything distinct from God's influence." 

Again on p. 15, where Mr. Flint makes some aspersion against the doctrine of 
natural depravity. 



3/0 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

Circle in the year 1819 for the study of the Scriptures. 
This became a Sabbath-school in 1822, held in a private 
home, adjoining the present Engine House, Number One. 

Students from Andover Theological Seminary, an insti- 
tution organized to oppose the Unitarian movement, 
came here frequently to preach. Some of the towns- 
people attended these services, and the disaffection grew 
until the old parish became divided by an irreconcilable 
breach. 

There were personal resentments as well as religious 
differences which enlarged the number of disaffected par- 
ishioners, until there were twenty who signed "articles of 
agreement to build another meeting-house for the worship 
of Almighty God." 

They were : — 

John C. Proctor. Thomas Stoddard. 

Jairus Pratt. Bethiah Lothrop. 

Nichols Tower. Anna Stoddard. 

Paul Bates. Abner Briggs. 

Thaddeus Lawrence. Elizabeth Briggs. 

Daniel Bates. Maria Bates. 

Henry Homes. David Beal. 

Zenas Stoddard. Mary Lincoln. 

Leavit Burbank. Priscilla Lincoln. 

Thomas Farrar. Jacob Whitcomb. 

Their house of worship was undertaken that fall and 
was dedicated January 27, 1825, upon the land where it 
now stands, given by Captain Nichols Tower. 

Meanwhile a church had been organized with twenty 
members by the help of several other churches, includ- 
ing the Old South of Boston and the First Church of 
Braintree. 

The animosities which grew out of that division in the 
old parish were hard to suppress. Families were divided 
so that husband and wife going together to public worship 
upon a Sabbath morning would separate at the Common, 



THE TOWN'S CHURCH AND ITS DIVORCE. 



71 



one going into the old meeting-house and the other into 
its new rival. 

The old pastor and certain prominent citizens, meeting 
upon the street, ignored each other. For many years the 
town had in it feelings of bitterness and of sadness over 
the breach, but the second parish grew until its building 
was twice enlarged. From that year, 1825, the town 
never again undertook to be responsible for the public 
worship of its citizens. By common consent the manage- 
ment of the first parish was left to that parish instead of 




Photo, Harriet A. Nickerson. 

Congregational Chi;rch. Built 1824. 



being done by the town. The town's ownership of the 
building seemed to melt away into the hands of its pew 
owners, who became incorporated as an ecclesiastical so- 
ciety as the State law provided. Several other parishes 
have been organized in the town since then, including the 
Beechwood Congregational, the Roman Catholic, and the 
Episcopal churches, which will be spoken of in a later 
chapter. 



372 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

The support of churches has become purely voluntary, 
without any supervision by the town government. Thus 
there are many citizens who bear none of the burden of 
public worship. It may seem unjust to distribute the bur- 
den so unequally ; but we Americans who divorce the 
church from the state feel that the ones most benefited 
by the church are the supporters of it, and the ones most 
injured by neglecting it are those themselves who neg- 
lect it. 

There is only one point at which the town still holds a 
public and universal allegiance to the churches, and that is 
in exempting them all from taxes. The town's approval 
of public worship, indeed the town's effort to furnish pub- 
lic worship, is shown by this exemption. 

This period of one hundred and eight years, from 17 17 
to the year 1825, thus witnessed the gradual relinquishment 
of town responsibility for public worship, from the beginning 
when the precinct did everything for the parish, to the end 
when nothing was done by the town except the abatement 
of the taxes on church property. 



NOTES CONCERNING THE CHURCH. 

1773. Selectmen's account : 

Paid to Ezekiel Lincoln for Ringing the Bell and takeing Care Meeting- 
house and tolling the Bell i^^ 15^. 2>d. 

June 1799 Agreed with Zealous Bates, John Pratt and Zenas Lincoln, a com- 
mittee, for building tower and steeple on the meeting house for four 
hundred dollars. — Caleb Nichols' account book, p. 46. 

1816 Nov 17. This evening the Singers went to Mr Flints to sing. — J. W. diary. 

1818 Mch 15, Sunday. Capt Levi Tower published Intentions of marriage from 
the pulpit. — J.W. diary. 

1822 Feb. 3. This day had a stpve in the meeting house for the first time. — 
Joel Willcutt's diary. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 

WHILE the town government was gradually relin- 
quishing its responsibility for public worship, it 
was taking on an increasing care of public schools. 

The precinct at its beginning in 1717 had no schools. 
As we saw in a previous chapter, the first money for 
schools which they received from the town of Hingham 
was not obtained until four years after they became a pre- 
cinct, and this was spent for a " dame school " and for 
"reading and syphering." 

They tried to get a schoolmaster for a few months of 
schooling each year, but failed. The first committee to 
engage a schoolmaster was appointed October 14, 1728, 
but there was no schoolhouse except what little building 
might be rented by the committee. 

The next year, 1729, the school term began as late as 
December 20 and the amount of money expended was 
^ig 13J. 7<^/., so that we may imagine the school to have 
closed by the month of March. 

The dame schools were no more mentioned in the pre- 
cinct records, but they were probably kept and paid for 
by the parents of children who attended them in various 
parts of the town. Nowadays the majority of our teach- 
ing is done by women in the public schools, but it was 
not for many years that any woman teacher in this 
community could venture to control the public school. 
It would have seemed absurd to have for a teacher any 
one whose muscle was inferior to that of the brawniest 
boy in the room. The discipline was necessarily of a 
brutal sort ; and if the boys could "whip" a teacher in a 



374 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



go-as-you-please encounter, that pedagogue was no good 
for that school. 

Learning was quite a secondary accomplishment in 
teachers' fitness. For this reason the annual school com- 
mittees had always to furnish a 7naster, and not merely a 
teacher. 

For a community so poor as this, where the annual 
appropriation for schools did not exceed twenty pounds 
but once in the first twenty years of the precinct life, no 
man of experience could afford to be the master. The one 
procured for the three months of each winter was a young 
man who needed this bit of hard-earned money to help 
him through his college course. 

At Hingham, in the first precinct, Cornelius Nye dur- 
ing several years taught the public school for eight or nine 
months ; but here, in the second precinct, only about one 
third of that time was supplied. The first master for 
Cohasset mentioned by name in the treasurer's book was 
Samuel Holbrook, who taught for one hundred and three 
days in 1734-35 and received ^19 15^". id., or less than 
one hundred dollars. 

The place where this young man, one hundred and 
sixty-four years ago, gathered his pupils, was in a little 
building near by the church. At least a part of the one 
hundred and three days were spent there. Possibly the 
Beechwood inhabitants and those at Jerusalem had the 
school in private houses of their own neighborhoods for 
a part of the time ; but upon the plain at the center of 
the precinct there was a little building for the school, 
erected in the year 1734. The town government had 
granted to this precinct a little money for a schoolhouse, 
and some school advocates had already started the little 
building referred to ; for on October 7, 1734, this precinct 
"voted that the frame now raised shall be here continued 
and finished." 

They also voted "that the two arms of the precinct, 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 375 

namely, all the inhabitants above Samuel Orcutt's in 
Beechwood street," and those "of Rocky Nook, at 
Straits Pond, and the Nicholses excepting Jaazaniah 
Nichols and Jeremiah Mansfield," " may draw their pro- 
portion of the money granted by the Town of Hingham 
towards the building a school-house — provided they use 
the same in building a school-house or school-houses." 

The people on King Street were voted the " liberty to 
join with the two arms abovesaid if they see cause so 
to so." 

There is no further evidence that either of these 
"arms" attempted to erect a building with their small 
shares. 

Samuel Holbrook, the first-named schoolmaster of the 
precinct, was employed for two seasons ; and then, in 1737, 
a Mr, Dommings assumed the ferule. 

The next young man to teach in our community was a 
Cohasset boy, who was born, probably, at the famous Lin- 
coln homestead, in the south end of the precinct, during 
the year 171 7 — the very year the precinct was born — 
and who became afterwards so influential in gaining town 
rights that we have called him the father of the town. 
Deacon Isaac Lincoln, when about twenty years of age, 
had the courage to assume control over the boys of his 
own community ; and it may be that this school experience 
gave him some prestige in the community which enabled 
him in later years to secure for his fellow citizens the 
charter of the town. 

A few years later than Isaac Lincoln's teaching days 
a son of Deacon Lazarus Beal kept school during the 
summer of 1748, from May i to August 25, at a salary 
of ;^5 per month. A summer school was considerably 
easier to keep than a winter one, for the big boys were 
off on the fishing schooners or busy upon the farms, so 
that only the smaller boys and the girls had to be cared for. 

But the summer school was an evidence of a larger 



^3/' 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



respect for education, because from that time onward the 
school was worthy of some attention, even when farm 



work and fishing were going on. 



It must not be supposed that the studies of Cohasset 



\ ^^(3^Cif/l7 illy, y y >/ .' n nd //^ (t,'/ttio S .-^y'^" c 






CjS^- 



(JU- 

















A Problem in Navigation. 
From the book of Nathaniel Nichols, Jr., 1745. 

young people were confined to subjects taught in our ordi- 
nary grammar schools, for there were always a few young 
men whose ambition led them into such studies as geome- 
try and navigation. In this advanced work they were 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 



77 



guided by some private tutoring, either in school as spe- 
cial students, companions of the teacher, or out of school 
by some experienced mariner who passed along what he 
had learned. Young navigators were always to be found 
in Cohasset durmg the last century, studying distances 
and courses upon the ocean, from shore to shore, such 
as the practical sailing of a ship might require. The ac- 
companying example taken from the book of Nathaniel 
Nichols, Jr., 1745, is a fair illustration of what many 
young men, brought up in this seacoast village, might have 
done at that early date. 

Soon after the year 1750 schooling for seven months 
of the year instead of three was in vogue, lasting from 
November i to June i. During the years 1754 and 1755 
Samuel Gushing, Esq., of Beechwood, taught for these 
seven months, receiving annually ^18 13J. 4^. He was a 
justice of the peace, a man fifty-five years of age, and he 
may have been needed to quell the school at a time when 
it suffered a critical disturbance. The amount paid him was 
a very small wage, but his legal business could be carried 
on at the same time. In the year 1761 the town of 
Hingham gave this precinct over £26 for the schoolmaster, 
but it was not a satisfactory proportion of the ^150 or 
more devoted to the school purposes of the whole town. 
The grammar school, which the province laws required 
to be held in every town, was kept in the first precinct, 
while the other two precincts had to help pay for it. 
There is no evidence that Cohasset ever had a grammar 
school while she was a precinct ; it was only " Reading, 
Riting and Rithmetic," the "three R's," that the Co- 
hasset schools could provide. 

Some eighteen years after the first little schoolhouse on 
the plain, the precinct voted in 1752 to build two more 
schoolhouses. It voted "also that three men who shall 
be appointed by y« Parish shall order where each of 
y-" shall be placed;" the design being probably thus to 



78 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



supply the needs of the two "arms," Beechwood and 
Jerusalem. 

We know but little of these houses ; the chimney of one 
of them was built by William Bates, for which he was paid 
in 1762, ^i 6s. %d. Daniel Lincoln was paid for " Labor 
and stuff" £,1 2s. 6d., and Joseph Thaxter for nails 6s. c^d. 
One quaint charge was that of Nehemiah Leavitt, black- 



3e 



icli l^or Ljounoer £>cKQiar& 



Closet 



Teackcrs 

Dc$k 



i^ JicUj |nr nUpr RcK 



01 ars 



Bcncty W olc/er it)ri\ \o.r<. 



o 

Fire 
?lace 



'2>^nt\\ j-ori/o(ynger Scholav-s 



Etttri 



ha.1i«etic. 




Interior Plan of the First Beechwood School. 
Drawn as described bv one of the oldest residents. 



smith in Hingham, "for a pair of tongues for y^ school 
house in 2nd parish." This was a pair of tongs to manip- 
ulate the logs in the open fireplace. These tongs suggest 
many more rude implements of that primitive culture. 
An hourglass was used for keeping the time, and the 
seats used were wooden benches without backs and with- 



SCHOOL PROGRESS .LVD THE ACADEMY. 379 

out any desks. At the noon hour in winter the scholars 
from a distance ate their cold luncheons of "rye 'n* 
Injun" bread while gathered about the fireplace, perhaps 
warming mince pie and bottles of milk upon the hearth. 

Ungraded as the school was, in whatever part of the 
precinct it was being held, the scholars were of all ages 
from six to twenty years. The method of teaching had 
to be for the most part personal coaching rather than 
class work. In arithmetic, for example, each would work 
away upon his own "sums" while the teacher went 
from scholar to scholar approving or correcting and ex- 
plaining. 

The best example of class work was in spelling, when 
a long line of boys and girls stood up to spell all kinds of 
words, many of them never used in the community except 
for " spelling matches," When a big boy blundered out a 
wrong order of letters, a little girl by his side might catch 
up the word and spelling it correctly, would pass above him 
towards the "head of the class." This spelling custom 
was a famous occupation in those early days, for it gave 
room for much practice in memorizing, which seemed to 
constitute the most important factor in the idea of an edu- 
cation. 

Nothing was taught of natural science in the animal or 
vegetable or mechanical realms. Whatever drawing was 
done was of the kind that must be punished ; for the im- 
pulse to pictorial art, being never encouraged, was forced 
to break out in some caricatures of teacher or pupils that 
could not be allowed. The instruction in reading was de- 
signed to give fluency and moral training. The aims of a 
modern teacher of literature were scarcely suggested by 
the way reading was taught. For many years there were 
probably no reading books such as came into uise after the 
Revolutionary War, and a teacher must have had to use 
any kind of books that might be owned by the scholars, 
the Bible beins; the most available one. 



380 HISTORY OF CO/IASSET. 

The art of writing has changed but little, and there were 
many who reached a wonderful proficiency a century and 
a half ago in Cohasset. 

The one peculiarity was in the use of goose quills for 
pens. The teacher had a sharp " pen " knife with which he 
kept making and sharpening pens a large part of the time 
when the writing period was on. A bunch of quills such 
as were used for more than a century by the writers in 
this community are preserved in the town's historical 
collection, and specimens of quill penmanship are there 
displayed.* 

The imperfect implements of that early intellectual train- 
ing were sufficient, however, to accommodate the unfold- 
ing of strong minds and to encourage the good judgment 
necessary to the life of the community. 

The school of the precinct was a roving one for many 
years, but after a while the Jerusalem and the Beechwood 
people demanded schools of their own, not kept in turn by 
the one master of the town, but by separate masters. 
According to the old vote of December 30, 173 1, the two 
arms of the precinct had the school with them their pro- 
portion of the time, according to what they paid of the 
school tax. Twenty-six years later, 1757, it was voted that 
the inhabitants of the Beechwoods from Gushing Kilby's 
upwards should draw their proportion of the money that is 
allowed to the parish, provided they lay out the same in 
hiring a schoolmaster. Thus there were two schoolmas- 
ters ordered for the precinct, and one committee of three 
was to supply both. 

Nothing is said in the records about the school for Jeru- 
salem until seven years later, 1764, when they were allowed 
to draw their proportion of the money for schools just as 
the Beechwood people had been doing. 

From that year there were three schools provided in the 

* At least one of our town writers, Aaron Pratt, Esq., of Beechwood, still uses 
quill pens. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 38 I 

precinct, and a committee of five was appointed to attend 
to them. The school at the Center was ordered to be kept 
until June 17 in the year 1765, and then after two months 
and a half vacation was to be reopened September i. 

Thus for three years more the three schools sufficed ; 
but in 1768 it was voted that four pounds of the school 
money belonging to the " Center" should be " laid out in 
three women s schools at such places as the school com- 
mittee shall appoint." These "women schools " were sub- 
stantially the same as the "dame schools" of earlier 
days, in which smaller children were taught by a woman 
somewhat as in primary schools and kindergartens nowa- 
days. Little fingers were taught to sew, and especially 
each little girl had to make a "sampler." This "sampler" 
was a piece of coarse cloth into which the letters of the 
alphabet and other designs were worked with silk or soft 
woolen thread. Many of them can be seen nowadays 
framed and hanging upon the walls in dwellings through- 
out our town. 

The women schools were a popular move that year, so 
the grant was doubled in 1769, and four of them were sup- 
ported at the Center where children were plentiful. The 
adoption of these dame schools by the town, instead of 
leaving them to private enterprise, was a distinct step in 
progress towards public responsibility for schools. 

The next year began our career as a town government, 
and we started off with an appropriation of thirty pounds for 
schools. This hundred and fifty dollars seems very small 
compared with our thirteen thousand five hundred dollars 
appropriated for schools the present year (1898) ; but the 
beginning was right in principle, however meager. 

One peculiar custom of school support at the period 
here reached was in the matter of supplying stove wood to 
keep the schoolroom warm. The town voted, December 2C, 
1770, not to take any money from the school appropriation 
to spend for wood. Instead of that extravagance, they 



382 HISTORY OF con ASSET. 

voted that " every Child that cometh to the Reading and 
Writing School till wood is wanted, shall bring to s'^ 
School a foot of Wood or one shilling & sixpence in 
money to the School-master to purchase Wood ; and that 
the School-master take a list of the names of those children 
that come to School as aforesd and return their names 
and to whom they belong to the Assessors that shall be 
chosen the next March meeting, and the Assessors when 
they make the District rate, add to the s'' rate what those 
persons are behind towards wood, and for want of wood 
the Commity draw money out of the treasury to pur- 
chase it." 

The next year, 1771, one more school district was set 
off with its proportion of money according to taxes paid. 
This additional district was the community along South 
Main Street from Lincoln's Mill at Scituate down as far 
as our Cove, excepting Thomas Stephenson and Abel 
Kent. 

But this arrangement was not satisfactory ; so the next 
year, 1772, they were rejoined to the Center, and the 
school was kept for one half of the time at the school- 
house, one quarter of the time "at or near Joseph Will- 
cutt's," and the remaining quarter " at or near John 
Stephenson's." 

At the year 1773-74 the point of ^35 appropriation 
for schools was reached, while the pastor's was about 
^88 ; and it was not until many years passed that the 
town support of schools equaled her support of the church. 

In 1774 the first reference to a school bell is made, 
when the town consented to have one put upon the Center 
schoolhouse " provided it be done without charge." 

The roving school was not yet obsolete, for the people 
in King Street now demanded their share of the time for 
the Center school to be kept among them. In the year 
1776 while some of the men were away to war this was 
granted — the first public school in King Street. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 383 

All this time there was one committee of three or five 
appointed each year to attend to the conducting of 
schools. 

In 1779, of the committee of three, one was stated 
definitely to represent the Center, one for Beechwood, 
and the third for Jerusalem. Three years later, 1782, 
there were four appointed, the additional one being for 
the "Mill Street " people, that is, for the neighborhood of 
Lincoln's Mill, South Main Street. But the Center school 
business seemed so much more important that three were 
appointed to represent it in 1784, thus enlarging the com- 
mittee to six. 

By this time the need of new schoolhouses was felt, 
but the motion to build three or one was voted down in 
1785. Beechwood had been already denied a new school- 
house. A "Grammer" school was ordered kept at the 
Center about three weeks longer, and it was also voted at 
that time to divide the town into three divisions for con- 
venience in schooling. The new scheme of division made 
the Center to include Jerusalem and King Street in one, 
Beechwood Street was the second, and South Main Street 
from the meadow was the third. 

Each division was to draw money according as it paid 
taxes. 

This was a clumsy device, and in 1788 King Street and 
Jerusalem each had to draw its own share from the town. 
That year fifty pounds were appropriated, and the follow- 
ing five were chosen to provide "School marsters " : — 

Thomas Pratt for the Center. Abel Beal for Jerusalem. 

Joseph Whitcomb for Beechwood. Galen James for King Street. 
Jerome Lincoln for Mill Street. 

But two years afterwards, in 1790, a vote was passed in 
regard to the apportionment of school money that regis- 
tered a huge leap in the principle of school support. 
Hitherto each division was empowered to draw money in 



384 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

proportion to its taxes, but that year it was voted to divide 
the town according to the number of children. 

The basis, not of property, but of children, was then 
for the first time inaugurated. The next year some 
attempt was made to get the system back again to a 
property basis ; but the vote was reconsidered, and 
again the money was "proportioned by the number of 
children." 

The divisions were now four : North End and South 
End, meeting at the bridge near Christopher James' hotel 
(Norfolk House), Beechwood and Jerusalem. The fotal 
number of school children in the year 1796 was 472, of 
whom 36 were at Jerusalem, 6}, in Beechwood, 165 at the 
South End, and 208 at the North End. The two hundred 
dollars appropriated that year went, therefore, to these 
in the order just named, $15.27, $26.6<^, $69.91, and 
$88.13.* The spirit of democracy was fairly begun by that 
reform in proportioning school expenses, and the name of 
the man who inaugurated it would be perpetuated if we 
only knew him. 

At about this time, 1796, a private or at least semi- 
public enterprise to educate the young was inaugurated ; 
it was the establishment of an academy. TWo hundred 
dollars for the schooling of four hundred and seventy-two 
children was ridiculously small when compared with our 
present-day appropriation of thirteen thousand dollars for 
less than four hundred scholars. One century ago the 
average amount paid by the town for each scholar for a 
whole year was less than fifty cents, whereas now it is 
nearly thirty-two dollars — sixty-four times as much. 
Some of the citizens of those early times felt the town's 
blunder in spending so little upon its children, and there- 
fore they began to institute an academy upon the plan 
of a joint stock company. 

*See Short Valuation by Elisha Doane for 1796. This census inchided children 
younger than five years and older than fifteen years, our present imiits. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 385 

A meeting of the men most interested in the project 
was held Saturday evening, Nov^ember 19, 1796, at the 
"tavern " of Christopher James (now the Norfolk House). 
Captain Levi Tower was moderator, and Samuel Brown 
clerk. The others most prominent were "Squire " Elisha 
Doane and Captain John Lewis. Their plan was to build 
a schoolhouse such as other academics of which they 
knew — Derby, for example, in Hingham. The land 
chosen was opposite the old meeting-house, where the 
Town Hall now stands, part of Captain Levi Tower's 
field, having fifty-five feet frontage. 




Photo, Mrs. E. K. Kll 

Academy Desk, 1830. 

The building was erected the next year, two stories 
high, with a porch in front for the stairway. The upper 
room had an arched ceiling to be used as a hall, while 
the lower part was divided into two schoolrooms. 

The fall of 1797 saw the enterprise well started. There 
were two teachers engaged, a preceptor, whose salary was 
voted not to exceed four hundred dollars a year, and a 
preceptress at one hundred and fifty dollars. 

The first incumbents mentioned were a Mr. Tilton and 
a Mrs. Chatelaine. 

The price of tuition was placed at forty-four cents a 



386 HIS TOR Y OF COHASSE T. 

week besides firewood, to be paid quarterly. No scholar 
was to be admitted to the academy for a period less than 
three months. The owners of shares were entitled to send 
one scholar for each share, and then other parties could 
fill up the rest of the full number of scholars. There were 
four vacations each year. 

There was no financial income from the enterprise, and 
some of the shareholders failed to keep up their assess- 
ments ; accordingly, for the sake of better management, 
the "Academy and Hall" were rented in 1801 to Sam- 
uel Brown, Christopher James, and Elisha Doane, free 
of charge for two years, provided they should keep the 
school. 

The total cost of the building was ^1,924.90; and of 
teaching services, $1,340.81. This total of more than 
three thousand dollars was none too large a burden for the 
nineteen proprietors, but more men were now anxious to 
have a part in these educational privileges. The old 
proprietors voted to have the stock divided into thirty 
shares instead of twenty-four, and no proprietor was 
allowed to own more than one share. 

The old and new proprietors together were as follows : — 

LIST OF THE THIRTY PROPRIETORS OF THE COHASSET 
ACADEMY, MARCH 27, 1804. 

Joseph Bates. Elisha Lincoln. 

Jonathan Bates. John J. Lothrop. 

Bela Bates. Peter Lothrop. 

Daniel Bates. Israel Nichols. 

David Beal. Caleb Nichols. 

John Beal. Captain Nathaniel Nichols. 

Thomas Bourne. Naaman Nichols. 

Samuel Browne. John Nichols. 

Elisha Doane. Samuel Pratt. 

Elisha Doane, Jr. John Pratt. 

Christopher James. Gershom Pratt. 

Susannah Lewis. Captain Luther Stephenson. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 



Z^7 



James Stodder. Job Turner. 

Samuel Stockbridge. Abraham Tower. 

Levi Tower. William VVhittington. 

It may be of interest to know who were some of the 
children fortunate enough to have this semi-private in- 
struction. The following list shows that many of the 
boys wfere not in attendance during the summer term : — 



LIST OF PUPILS OF 
QUARTER, 

Hepzibah C. Brown. 
Thomas Stephenson. 
Maria Doane. 
Clara Lothrop. 
Abagail Bates. 
Patty Tower. 
Sophia Turner. 
Sukey Bates. 



THE COHASSET ACADEMY FOR FIRST 
MAY 21 TO AUGUST 13, 1804. 



Abagail Beal. 
Polly Kent. 
Polly Beal. 
Lydia Little. 
Mercy Bates. 
Eliza Bourne. 

William 

Bailey. 



Mary Hall. 
Polly Nichols. 
Sally Kent. 
Polly Bailey. 
Hannah Nichols. 
Patience Tilden. 
Mary Collier. 



These all received twelve weeks' instruction at twelve 
cents per week. 

The total quarter's tuition was $30.24. After a vacation 
of one week the academy opened again with the following 
additions : — 

ADDITIONS TO LIST IN SECOND QUARTER, MONDAY, 
AUGUST 20, 1804, TO NOVEMBER 12, 1804. 

Betsey Pratt. Betsey Jenkins. Clarke Cutler. 

Sally Beal. Susannah Nichols. William Bordraan. 

Caleb Lothrop. Deborah Hayden. Abraham Tower. 

One week vacation, November 12 to November 19. 

ADDITIONS FOR THIRD QUARTER, MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 
1804, TO FEBRUARY 11, 1805. 



Sally Torrey. 
Nancy Turner. 
Penelope Stockbridge. 
Sally Jenkins. 
Abigail Woodworth. 
Susannah Lewis. 



Sophia Vinal. 
Merriel Lincoln. 
James Doane. 
Samuel Doane. 
Job Turner. 
Elijah Jarnes. 



Southward Pratt. 
Lois Nichols. 
Adam Stowell. 
James Little. 
Daniel Tower. 
Alexander Stockbridge. 



i88 



HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 



Festus Litchfield. 
Enos Bates. 
Joseph Hayden. 



Allen Hall. 
Phineas Bates, 
Peter Pratt. 



Lot Stodder. 
Thomas Lothrop. 
Hannah James. 



ADDITIONS FOR THE FOURTH QUARTER, MONDAY, FEBRUARY 



Amasy Bayley. 
Caleb Bayley. 
John Beal. 



25, 1805, TO MAY 20, 1805. 

Bela Bates. 
Nabby Woodward. 
Maria Doane. 



Abigail Otis. 
Betsey Lewis. 
Susannah Lewis. 



In the third quarter tuition increased to thirty cents and 
forty cents per week ; thirty cents per week if taught by 
preceptress, 40 cents per week if taught by preceptor. 











.■,Xi^ ^ » ■ •- 


^''^ ^« mil iiiig r-^*^ii^Bhi "^ 


^^^3ffi*r^^3)l^3 




S 


■. jL «~ ^^|h 



Photo, Octavius H. Reamy. 

Winter Scene from Sunset Rock. 

But the Cohasset academy was unable to get firmly 
established. There were not enough people who would 
afford to pay the necessary cost of this private or semi- 
public tuition. Those who had put money into the enter- 
prise had grown tired of it at about the time of the War of 
18 1 2. They were not willing to add to the outlay by 
hiring teachers to carry on the school. An attempt was 
made to sell the building, but it could not be sold. 

Then began its career as a sort of town hall. The 
upper room had been already the place for many public 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 389 

meetings, one of which we have noted — the celebration 
of peace after the War of 18 12. 

For thirty years and more the hall was rented for vari- 
ous purposes — singing school, theater, debating society, 
March meeting ball, phrenological lecture, temperance 
meetings, and other gatherings. It was used as a sail loft 
at one time, where the broad canvases of our fishino- craft 
might be cut and sewed. 

One of the later uses for which the academy was rented 
was a high school, paid for by the town. Now a high 
school paid for by the town was precisely what ought to 
have been established before ; and in fact the academy 
project would never have been started but for the town's 
slowness in assuming responsibility for higher education. 

The public school progress during the academy period 
until the beginning of the high school must now be re- 
ferred to briefly. At the year 1796, the date where we 
branched off to consider the academy, we found the school 
children numbering four hundred and seventy-two. That 
number is greater than we have to-day of school age, and it 
may be readily seen that the tiny schoolhouses of a century 
ago were much overcrowded. The Beech wood people had 
been clamoring for a school building at every town meeting' 
for years, and so also had the Jerusalem people, but both 
of them in vain. They were offered only partly enough to 
build, or they were granted money to hire additional room. 
To reduce the number of scholars, none were admitted in 
1798 under six years of age; and besides this means of 
preventing an excess of scholars, at this time the establish- 
ment of the academy relieved the pressure upon the school 
at the center of the town and probably drew somewhat 
from the other "arms" of the town. In 1792 the little 
Center schoolhouse had been ordered repaired and moved 
and a new schoolhouse was built, both together costing 
;^54 9J-. \\d. By this change the writer understands 
that a schoolhouse was provided for the South End 



190 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



and the other for the North End. But the two "arms," 
Beechwood and Jerusalem, begged in vain for new school- 
houses. 

In the last year of that century, 1799, it was thought 
best to disintegrate the school management still further 
by appointing separate committees of three for each of 
the four "districts." There had been hitherto one com- 
mittee with representatives from the four parts of the 
town, but now the committee was broken into four sepa- 
rate committees. Whatever wisdom or authority a single 
committee for the whole town might have had was now 
broken into bits. The following were the several district 
committees in 1799: — 

( Aaron Nichols. i Ambrose Bates. 

North. •< Zenas Lincoln. Beechwood. \ Joseph Whitcomb. 

(_ Captain Levi Tower. ( John Wheelwright, Jr. 

f Caleb Nichols. i Joseph Nichols. 

South. \ Samuel Pratt. Jerusalem. \ Ephraim Lincoln. 

( Christopher James. ( Frost Hudson. 

They had only three hundred dollars to divide between 
them according to their number of scholars, so that there 
seems little need to have appointed so many to spend it. 
But school politics are queer affairs, and it used to seem 
necessary for every little faction of public sentiment to 
have a representative on the committee. The next year 
the unity of the school system was still more broken up 
by appropriating one quarter of the school money to 
dame schools, which were already in existence scat- 
tered in every neighborhood of the town. They may have 
been valuable adjuncts of the public schools, but the latter 
were already too meagerly supported to admit of one 
quarter of the funds being scattered in these little 
dame schools. 

Two years later, 1803, the three hundred dollars appro- 
priation seems to have remained intact for the public 
schools, because no mention is made of the dame schools. 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 391 

These committees chosen from different parts of the 
town, with the mistaken idea that the people of each dis- 
trict were the best judges of the school interests of that 
district, were appointed year after year for more than a 
quarter of a century. In 1822 there was indeed an attempt 
to divide school management still further by making King 
Street into a district, but that failed. That same year 
there was made an effort in the opposite direction by ap- 
pointing a town committee of three to visit these district 
committee schools in the interest of the whole town. The 
district committees were to notify the visiting committee 
when they were all ready to be visited and to go with the 
visitors to their school. What a red-letter day it must 
have been when these six men, or as many as would go, 
crowded into the little schoolhouse to hear the children 
"speak pieces" and "spell " and go through various per- 
formances for show ! 

But there was yet another movement towards unity in 
the year 1828. Before that time the district committees 
had cared for their own schools, even to the extent of 
building new ones, but in that year it was voted " to pay 
the several school districts in the town for their school- 
houses and in the future to build and support all the 
schoolhouses in their corporate capacity." A new dis- 
trict was separated out of the North and South Ends 
by taking one third of the children from each to form 
the Center district. But the five districts never became 
so separate again as they had been. The State law 
now required every town to choose a superintending 
committee, and by the year 1830 we had settled to a com- 
mittee of three to hold our school system in order. 
Indeed, there was not much that could be called system 
until within the last fifty years, when " grades " have been 
established. It was one of the unremitting labors of the 
late Rev. Joseph Osgood, in his long service for the town, 
to bring about this uniform teaching and systematic pro- 
motion in our schools. 



392 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



The dame schools gradually gave way to public pri- 
mary schools as early as 1840. The public high school 
was introduced in 1826 and had a few warm advocates. 
In that year the town "voted to establish such a school in 
the center of the town for the sole use of such boys and 
girls as have arrived at the age of fourteen years." Seven 
hundred dollars for schools were appropriated that year, 
two hundred and twenty-five dollars being set aside for 
the high school. This school was to be held in the 
academy building, but nothing further has been found in 
the records to prove the establishing of it at that date. 

Twelve years later, in 1838, a committee appointed to 
consider the project of a permanent high school reported 
in its favor, as the note at the bottom of this page will 
show.* 

The method of introducing this higher department of 
public instruction was by making it an appendage to the 
academy. The teacher of a private school in that build- 
ing during the spring and summer months was thus en- 
abled to eke out his salary by taking the high school into 
his care during the winter months. Some who live now 

* 1838. The Committee, chosen at a meeting of members of the Three Middle 
Districts in this Town to take into consideration the project of establishing a High 
School, asli leave to report, that, after mature deliberation, they have come to the 
conclusion that some change in the school arrangements of the three Centre Dis- 
tricts is imperatively called for by the interests of Education in those districts^ 
What that change is, has been a question they have found it difificult satisfactorily 
to determine. However, after getting what light on the subject they could, they 
have agreed to recommend the following plan. I. Let there be established at 
some central point a Public High School to be kept by a competent male Teacher 
six months in the year, and let this school embrace all those scholars in the three 
districts who are over the age of 13. 2. Let there be a public male school kept for 
3 months in the year in each of the Districts. 3. Let there be a public school kept 
by a female instructor in each of the districts for 7 months in the year — these last 
schools to include all the pupils between the ages of 4 and 13. Should this 
arrangement be adopted there would be liable to be in each of the schools a num- 
ber of scholars as follows. In the High School 100. In the North 60. In the 
Centre 90. In the South 75. (This estimate is based upon returns made by each 
of the Teachers in the Districts of all the scholars who have attended the schools 
this winter. Owing to peculiar circumstances, a few more would need to be added 
to the estimate of the North school to make it correct.) The expense of this 



SCHOOL PROGRESS AND THE ACADEMY. 393 

and who read these lines remember Mr. Tuck, who per- 
formed this double function, as early as the year 1841, 
with a remarkable degree of skill. 

In the course of nine years it became possible to 
lengthen the term of the high school and to increase its 
appropriation so that a Mr. Hervey, the next teacher, 
was employed to hold the school for a full year. 

From that time forward the high school has been a 
permanent and growing institution of the town. With 
the establishment of primary schools and a high school 
and intermediate schools, the development of the town's 
work in educating its young was well under way, and 
the use of private schools taught by the minister or 
by spinsters or by academy preceptors gradually melted 
away. 

The democratic idea of free public schools began in 
our precinct by paying some "dames" a few pounds to 
teach children in various places ; and it has grown, as we 
shall see in another chapter, to become the largest enter- 
prise of our corporate community. 

arrangement has been calculated as follows. Salary of the Teacher of the High 
School ^^250. Salaries of the District male Teachers $225. Salaries of the 
female Teachers $168. Fuel for all the schools $100. Rent of a room for a High 
School S25. Making in all the sum of $768. (In this estimate, 525 per month has 
been allowed to each of the male Teachers in the district schools, and 2 dollars 
per week to each of the female Teachers.) 

The practicabiUty of this plan must depend somewhat as is evident, upon the 
disposition of the town to raise more money than it does at present. Allowing to 
each of the extreme districts its proportional share of the increase, an additional 
appropriation of $230 would be required, and this, as it seems to your Committee, 
is a very small sum compared with the great good which they anticipate from the 
change proposed, should it be carried into successful operation. At any rate they 
think it very desirable to make the experiment for one year, and should it fail, the 
loss of $200 would not, they trust, be the ruin of the Tow^n. Still they would sub- 
mit their plan with all deference to the consideration of the several districts, trusting 
that they will decide upon it, in such a manner as best to promote the intellectual 
and moral interests of the rising generation. 

Respectfully submitted by 

H. G. O. PHIPPS. 
PAUL PRATT, 

L. N. BATES, 

Committee. 



394 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



LIST OF HIGH SCHOOL TEACHERS. 



1841-1850, 
1850-1851. 
1S50-1853. 

1853-1854. 

1854-1855. 

1855-1856. 

1856-1858. 
1858-1859. 
1859-1861. 



Jacob Tuck, 

James Hervey. 

George H. Fillmore. 
{ Robert Metcalf. 
■j Mr. Crocker. 
(. Mr. Perkins. 

Frank Willard. 

John F. Browne, 

Mr. Gunnison. 

Mr. Bullard. 

Mr. Bullard. 

William F. Bacon. 

Robert F. Leighton. 



1861-1862. Henry Leonard. 

1862-1865. Robert F. Leighton. 

1 865-1866. Nathan Harrington, 

1866-1868, Col. Samuel Harrington. 

1868-1869. William E. Buck. 

1870-1871. E. J. Caswell. 

1871-1872. William B. French. 

1873. F. W. Knowlton. 

1873-1875. W. H. Knight. 

1875-1884. Drusilla Lothrop. 

1885-1890. Arthur Stanley. 

1890-1891. E. J. Cox. 

1891- Charles Y. Jacobs. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 

OUR narrative of the industries of the town was 
interrupted by the story of the War of 1812, and 
by the two subsequent chapters upon the church and the 
school. 

It is necessary now to go back some years and to follow 
along the events of shipbuilding and fishing which accom- 
panied the progress of the church and the school. 

It will be remembered that in the previous century, 
1737, there were eight vessels, averaging twenty-two tons 
each, assessed in this town. It would be a great satisfac- 
tion to know the exact employment of these vessels, 
whether carrying commerce between the seaports of the 
different colonies and the West Indies, or fishing for cod 
in the waters of northern New England, or being dashed 
in helpless wrecks upon some rocky coast. 

In any case, we may be sure that codfishing was an im- 
portant part of their business in summer. 

All along the Atlantic shore from Newfoundland to 
Maine codfishing had been carried on for a century or 
more by French and English from across the ocean and 
by settlers in America. Clumsy sailing craft with high 
sterns, like the accompanying illustration, sailed from 
Cohasset with some of our ancestors each season for the 
codfishing grounds. 

No early records of this industry are known to e.xist, 
but the annual catch for the hundred years intervening 
between 1737 and 1837 may have been worth more than 
a thousand dollars. At any rate, in the year 1837,* when 
mackerel fishing had come to usurp almost the exclusive 

•Barber's Historical Collections, p. 455. 

395 



196 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



attention of our fishermen, there were, nevertheless, 
seven hundred and fifty quintals of cod taken, which 
were valued at two thousand two hundred and fifty 
dollars. 

When we remember that the codfishing at Cohasset 
had dwindled to nearly nothing by the year 1840, so that 
very few people remember its existence, while the enor- 
mous sum of four thousand four hundred quintals was the 
catch of one season upon record, we may feel sure that 




Codfishing off the Banks, 1780 and later. 



the years between 1737 and 1837 could tell some pretty 
big fish stories for so small a town. 

Elisha Doane, who came here in 1786, had much 
money invested in codfishing, and his old account books 
tell some transactions that prove the magnitude of this 
extinct enterprise of the town. 

The larger schooners went to the Grand Banks of New- 
foundland, the Bay of Chaleur, and Prince Edward Island 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 397 

in April or May and stayed there fishing until September, 
catching and salting the fish. 

The method of these northern fisheries was at first to 
fish from the sides of the schooner ; but later, an eighty- 
ton schooner, with her crew of twelve or fourteen, would 
anchor in some harbor while small boats with two men 
in each would sail and row to the fishing grounds. They 
used hand lines. The fish were taken to the shore, 
cleaned and washed, and then salted down. Afterwards 
many of them were laid upon the hot rocks in the sun 
to dry. 

Towards the close of the season vessels bound to 
Europe would sometimes buy from the fishermen the 
stock already dried, but those which were brought home 
to dry were spread upon the fish flakes at Bassing Beach 
until cured enough to be tied up in bundles for the Boston 
market. 

The food of the fishermen was much increased by the 
countless birds' eggs to be found upon the islands in their 
fishing waters, and the men always took guns and ammu- 
nition to supply the larder with fowl. The earnings of a 
common fisherman upon these trips were about sixteen 
or eighteen dollars a month. 

The State government provided no public records for 
the codfish business as it did for pickled fish, and the 
statistics of it are therefore meager ; but enough has been 
said to intimate the scope of the dried fish industry before 
the smaller and more beautiful mackerel fascinated our 
fishermen. The mackerel business is vividly in the minds 
of one half our adult inhabitants, who recall with pride 
the days when the port of Cohasset had but few superiors 
in that industry. 

The vessels used in the enterprise were nearly all built 
at home, as we have already shown in a former chapter. 
During the year 181 3 the dangers of war seemed to be so 
far distant from our harbor that our energetic townsman, 



398 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

Levi Tower, built and launched three more small schoon- 
ers, the Shark, the Dolphin, and the Porpoise. Vessels 
grew old and some of them would get wrecked occasion- 
ally, so that new ones had to be made to replace them. 
Others were sold to fish merchants in other ports, who 
fancied them, thus making more work for our shipbuild- 
ers. Moreover, our fishing fleet kept slowly increasing as 
more men pressed into the business needing more vessels. 

During the six years following the great day of peril 
in 1 8 14 our shipyards turned out twenty-two schooners, 
ranging from forty-two tons to ninety-two tons in size. 
One year there were as many as six of these launched into 
our Cove. 

The most prominent shipbuilder of that period was 
Captain Levi Tower, who kept building continuously, either 
for himself or for other owners. Besides him the other 
master builders were James Stoddard, Bela Bates, Abel 
Kent, Luther Stephenson, Caleb Nichols, Abraham 
Tower, Nichols Tower, Jonathan B. Bates, and others. 

The model of these fishing schooners was a square- 
sterned craft, somewhat broad and clumsy, but safe and 
strong. A new style of schooner, called a "pinky" or 
"pink" or "picky," was coming into vogue during this 
period. Its distinguishing feature was a very high and 
pointed stern. This new departure in the shipbuilding art 
was first indulged here in the year 18 17 by Levi Tower, 
when he built the Lady Washington, of fifty-two tons. 

The high, pointed stern is said to have been devised as 
a cheap way of securing a bit of deck room high enough 
to keep dry. The old square-sterned schooners, after 
the fashion of building the high poop deck went out, 
were very wet in case of a rough sea, for the waves break- 
ing upon the bow could sweep the whole length of the 
deck. The pinky furnished a little triangular place abaft 
the rudderpost, high enough to keep things dry when the 
waves tumbled in upon the deck. By pointing the stern 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



399 



above the rudder it was also possible to avoid the expense 
of making the broad, flat stern plank, allowing the side 
planks to run out a little farther until the ends came 
together. At the very peak of the stern there was a notch 
made at the meeting of the quarter rails, into which the main 
boom could be dropped when the vessel was at rest. A 
respectable and roomy quarter-deck in a square sterner 
was much to be preferred, and the pinkies were not long 
the ruling style. 

In that year, 1817, there were two more built with the 




Hull ok a Pinky. 1820. 

pink stern, the Fawn, by James Stoddard, for Peter 
Lothrop, and the Lizard, by Abraham Tower, for himself. 
The shipyards where the building was done during the 
years 1811-19 were principally the one upon what is 
now the Lawrence Barrett estate * and the one near the 
present Guild Hall. Another small shipyard is said to 
have been at the inlet on the northwest side of the Bar- 
rett estate. 

A list of the vessels built at this period has been 
gleaned out of the Enrollment books, and it may present 
some interesting facts as to ship owners and ship builders 

* The summer residence of C. W. Barron. 



400 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



and skippers of those days. Not many vessels kept the 
same skipper for a long time, and in the following list the 
date by the skipper's name indicates the year when he 
commanded the vessel and had her enrolled : — 



LIST OF VESSELS BUILT IN COHASSET FROM 1811 TO 1819, AS 

OBTAINED FROM THE BOOKS OF ENROLLMENT AT 

BOSTON, UNITED STATES CUSTOM HOUSE. 



Year 


1 
Name. Tons. 


Owner. 


Builder. 


Master. 


1811 


Speedwell . 


98 


Levi Tower 


Levi Tower 




Henry Snow 


1811 


[uno . . . 


96 ... . 








1813 


Shark . • 


37 Levi Tower 


Levi Tower 


1813 


Peter Pratt 


1813 


Dolphin. . 


21 


■1 It 


(• 11 


„ 


Noah Whitcomb 


1813 


Porpoise . 


32 


.■ » 


1. 


,. 


Peter Pratt 


1814 


Zylph . . 


43 


Abraham Tower 


Bela Bates 


1815 


Elisha Merritt 


1814 


Little Sarah 


74 


James Collier 








1814 


Ann . . . 


91 


L. Tower & N. 
Tower & Wm. 
Whitington 


Levi Tower 


1816 


Henry Snow 


1814 


Little Susan 


74 


James Collier 


.... 


1823 


Howland Otis 


1814 


Only Son . 


66 


.Abraham Tower 


.... 






1816 


William & 














Nancy . 


71 


Levi Tower 


Levi Tower 1816 


Win. Kilburn 


1816 


Porpoise . 


46 


. . . . 


. . . . 


Abraham Hall 


1816 


Franklin . 


75 


Luther Stephen- 


Luther Stephen- „ 


Sam'l Eldredge 








son 


son 






1816 


Independence 


44 


Caleb Nichols 


Caleb Nichols 


1816 


Sam'l Snow 


1816 


Three Sisters 


. 92 


Jno. J. Lothrop 


Levi Tower 


„ 


Anselin Lothrop 


1816 


Polly . . . 


• 42 


Nichols Tower 


» •■ 


„ 


Geo. Collier 


1817 


LadyWashini 


l- 












ton (pinky) 


52 


Levi Tower 


• 1 .1 


1817 


Hosea Orcutt 


1817 


Fawn . . 
(pinky) 


• 50 


Peter Lothrop 


James Stoddard 


•• 


Ezekiel Wallace 


1817 


Seloma . . 


• 54 


Nichols Tower 


Levi Tower 




David Nash 


1817 


Lizard . . 
(pinky) 


• S3 


Abraham Tower 


Abraham Tower 




Aaron Pratt 


1818 


America 


. 61 


Jas. C. Doane 


Bela Bates 


1818 


Noah Whitcomb 


1818 


Nancy . . 


. 50 


Abel Kent 


Abel Kent 


,, 


Thomas Lincoln 


1818 


Henry Knox 


. 42 


Nichols Tower 


Levi Tower 


,, 


Sam'l Hall 


1819 


W^illiam. . 
(pinky) 


• 50 


Peter Lothrop 


Jas. Stoddard 


1819 


Wm. Morris 


1819 


Young James 


. 67 


James Collier 


Thos. Rogers 


„ 


Abraham Hall 


1819 


Almira . . 


. 80 


Nichols Tower 


Nichols Tower 


,, 


Sam'l Hall 


1819 


Albicore 


. 55 


Jas. C. Doane 


Jonathan B.Bates 


1 " 


David Nash 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 4OI 

These were not all fishing vessels merely, but some, like 
the Speedwell, the Juno, the Three Sisters, and the Ann, 
measured nearly one hundred tons each, and were able to 
make ocean voyages to the West Indies, and even across 
the Atlantic. It is not known how many of these were 
actually engaged in an ocean commerce, but even those 
which were used a part of the time to catch codfish or 
mackerel were put into the freighting business along the 
Atlantic seaboard or across the ocean when freights were 
lucrative. 

The fishing business was a sort of primary school 
for Cohasset mariners, for many of them, after gaining 
here their first lessons in practical navigation, applied 
for positions in Boston upon larger foreign-going craft. 
Some of them became mates or captains, as we have 
already noted, and were thenceforth seen in Cohasset 
only occasionally, when their voyages about the world 
might permit.* 

The money which these captains earned upon their for- 
tunate foreign cruises they laid aside to be a support for 
them when they retired from their perilous careers. Many 
families of our community are living to-day upon the income 
of these earnings, inherited from fathers and grandfathers, 
and invested in Boston real estate, or in railroad bonds, 
or in some other financial repository. Many are the Co- 
hasset mariners who never came back from their last cruise, 
for their watery graves were found far from their native 
land. 

Some of the vessels of our town that were ambitious 
enough to embark in this larger marine enterprise, the 
owners of them being encouraged to let them go by the 
persuasion of the Cohasset mariners who had learned the 
tricks of the great sea, may be seen by the following 
list : — 

•Captain Ephraini Snow is said to have crossed the Atlantic fifty times. 



402 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



VESSELS REGISTERED AT THE PORT OF BOSTON DURING THE 

PERIOD NOW UNDER CONSIDERATION, FREIGHTING 

TO COAST AND TO FOREIGN PORTS. 



Date. 


Name. 


Owner. 


Captain. 


1815 


Little Sarah. 


James Collier. 


James Collier. 


?? 


New Orleans 


Levi Tower. 




1816 


(packet). 

Three Sisters. 


Levi Tower. 


Josiah Bacon. 


1817 


Franklin. 


Luther Stephenson. 


Luther Lincoln. 


j> 


Ann. 


Levi Tower. 


Thomas Pratt. 


>> 


Lizard. 


Abraham Tower. 


David Elwell. 


1818 


Three Sisters. 


Henry Snow. 


Henry Snow. 


5) 


Little Sarah. 


James Collier. 


George Hall. 


1820 


Almina. 


Nichols Tower. 


Bani Eldridge. 


>) 


Henry Knox. 


Nichols Tower. 


Josiah Bacon. 



But to return to the fishing industry. It will be remem- 
bered that we followed the shipbuilding up to the year 
1 8 19, after the War of 1812 ; but the reason for stopping 
at that date is only an accidental one. It happens that 
for the year 18 19 there was made out a list of the vessels 
engaged in the mackerel business which has been preserved 
among the Doane papers. This list enables us to see just 
how many vessels of all we saw building were actually en- 
gaged in fishing for that one season. There were thirty- 
nine of them. 

Of the seventy-five vessels that had been built from 
178910 1819, thirty years, there were thirty-six that had 
been lost or sold or engaged in other business than fishing. 



THIS OLD LIST WAS MADE OUT BY JAMES C. DOANE IN THE 

YEAR 18 19. 



Vessel. 

Four Brothers. 
Four Sisters. 
Little Martha. 
Cyrene. 
Mary Jones. 
Friendship. 



Captain. 

Leonard Litchfield. 
Norton Litchfield. 
E. Merritt. 
Howard Vinal. 
Caleb Bayley. 
Martin Merritt. 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



403 



Vessel. 

Miriam. 

Ruth. 

Hero. 

Lively. 

Independence. 

Charles Austin. 

Franklin. 

Mary. 

Sophia. 

Union. 

Treasure. 

William. 

Mary Ann. 

Betsey. 

Little James. 

Little Sarah. 

Jonah. 

America. 

Albacor. 

Dave. 

Almira. 

Three Sisters. 

Lydia. 

Salome. 

Priscilla. 

Lady Washington. 

Porpoise. 

Henry Knox. 

Dolphin. 

Only Joe. 

Two Sisters. 

Lizard. 

Zilpha. 

(Not named.) 



Captain. 

- Pinchion. 



Harvey Litchfield. 
Cotton Bayley. 
Hosea Orcutt. 
Paul Clapp. 
Isaiah Litchfield. 
Enos Bates. 

Witherby. 

E. Stoddard. 
And. Willcutt. 
John Creed. 
Wm. Morris. 
George Briggs. 

Hal), from the Cape. 

Abner Hall. 
George Hall. 



\ Turner's fleet. 



J 



Stephenson's 
fleet. 



Peter Lothrop's 
fleet. 



James Collier's 
fleet. 



A. Lothrop. 

Nash. 

Job Bayley. 

Sam'l Hall, L. A. Tower. 

Henry Snow. 

John Wilson. 

Daniel Bates. 

Ezra \Vallace. 

Leavit Barnes. 

Isaac Hall. 

John Neal. 



y 



ames C. 
fleet. 



Doane's 



Levi Tower's 
fleet. 



John Bates. 
Joshua Bates. 
Samuel Litchfield. 

from the Cape. 

John Lincoln. 



Abraham Tower's 
fleet. 



J 



The total number of barrels of mackerel for that year 
was nearly two thousand. This was a small number, but 



404 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



the price that year was a high one, the first grade of 
mackerel bringing $11.50 a barrel at wholesale.* The 
next year came an increase of the catch, as may be seen 
by the list at the end of this chapter; but the price that 
year utterly collapsed. From $11.50 down to $6.75 a 
barrel the market dropped, and it never came up so high 
again for twenty years. 

Fishermen's luck kept having its ups and downs, but 
during the six years beginning with 1820 the total catch 
of Cohasset steadily gained, until in 1825 the whole annual 
amount was 17,520 barrels. These fish, at the moderate 
price of five dollars a barrel for all grades, brought nearly 
ninety thousand dollars. 

One can easily see that our population of about twelve 
hundred must have been very much concerned in the fish 
business, and must have felt very widely the profit of a 
successful year. At least three hundred out of the twelve 
hundred were actual fishermen, while a score of boys in 
addition were employed to pack the fish, and many more 
laborers in cooper shops and salt works and shipyards 
were attached to the business indirectly. The homes of 
Beechwood in particular furnished a very large force of 
fishermen ; and so completely was that community bereft 
of men and boys during the fishing season that not a 

*The following is a list containing the prices of mackerel for fifty years com- 
mencing in 179s and ending 1844. The price is the highest wholesale quoted 
for the best quality. Copied by Ira B. Pratt from an old gazetteer. 



1795, ^10.00 


1805, ^10.10 


1815, ;5Si2.oo 


1825, $5.50 


183s, $6.60 


1796, ;gi2.oo 


1806, ^10.00 


1816, ^13.00 


1826. $4.75 


1836, $9.37 


1797, ^12.33 


1807, ^11.00 


1817, $11.00 


1827, $6.00 


1837, $9-25 


1798, S7-SO 


1808, ;SS9.50 


1818, $15.00 


1828, $5.00 


1838, $10.00 


1799. ^7-50 


1809, ;89.5o 


1819, $11.50 


1829, $5.37 


1839, $13-50 


i8co. $6.00 


1810, ;^io.oo 


1820, $6.75 


1830, $6.10 


1840, $11.50 


1801, ^8.25 


1811, ^11.50 


1821, $5.75 


1831, $6.12 


1841. $13.75 


1802, gg.oo 


1812, 514.C0 


1822, $7.75 


1832, $5-37 


1842, $10.50 


1803, ^8.00 


1813, $12.00 


1823, $4.87 


1833. S6.50 


1843, $7.75 


1804, ^lo.oo 


1814, ^^13.00 


1824, $6.25 


1834, $6.10 


1844, $10.25 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 405 

dozen able-bodied men could be gathered by an emergency 
like a house on fire. 

The actual experiences of these fishermen in a business 
now extinct in our town are worthy of a careful review. 

At least one skipper * living to-day remembers a fishing 
voyage as early as the year 1828. But the methods of 
fishing and of living were substantially the same until the 
middle of the century. 

We will imagine ourselves at one of those early years, f 
say 1836, making a first cruise on a mackerel schooner. 

On some spring day at the close of April we get per- 
mission of Abraham Hobart Tower or of James Cutler 
-Doane or of John Bates or of some other vessel owner to 
join the crew of ten fishermen in one of their schooners. 
That means a chance to fish from the deck of the schooner 
alongside of the others, upon the understanding that we 
are to get our share of the profits according to the number 
of fish that each of us may catch. 

The share of the profit going to the owner of the 
schooner is to be about one third. The first day's work 
is to heave aboard ballast and butts and salt. Twenty or 
thirty hogsheads or butts are rolled into the hold and 
placed at convenient positions under the hatches. These 
are to hold the fish we catch. 

Into the spaces between these butts we next throw 
about twenty tons of ballast, consisting of field stones 
that the old glacier left in our drumlins, and which 
" Uncle Job Gushing " or some other farmer hauls down 
to the wharf at one dollar per ton. These stones hold 
down the keel and keep the hogsheads in place, besides 
leaving room in the fields for better farming. 

Salt is next put in, perhaps twenty hogsheads of it. 
The salt room in a pinky was aft against the cabin, while 
in a "square stern " it was abreast the "coal hole," which 

* Captain Wm. V. Creed. 

+ In the year 1836 as described by Isaiah Lincoln. 



406 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

hole had two bunks and a locker for clothes. Some of the 
salt used was made upon our own beaches, as we shall see, 
but it had to be supplemented by Liverpool salt bought in 
Boston. 

With aching backs, and hands well roughed by our steve- 
doring, we crowd into the owner's store to get a new tar- 
paulin hat and leather boots, charged to our accounts as 
prospective partners in the fishing cruise. The men who 
have families get, in addition to hat and boots, a long strip 
of salt pork weighing ten or fifteen pounds, with which to 
feed their families while the men are off at sea. As we 
make our way homeward the neighbors are sure to see the 
big yellow tarpaulin upon our heads and to talk about our 
fishing venture. 

Thus the vessel having been fitted out, the next day 
the men get their outfit. A little firkin of tea, a box of 
"hard bread," two gallons of vinegar, a keg of rum hold- 
ing three or four gallons, and three or four bushels of 
potatoes at thirty-five cents per bushel, are dealt out and 
put aboard for the crew to own in common. These items 
are charged as "small general " account to be paid by the 
crew, while the ballast and hogsheads and salt, etc., were 
"great general" charges to be paid for by owners and 
crew together. 

Besides these items there are private supplies according 
to the taste and poverty of each man. Two pounds of 
butter in a box, three to five pounds of pork, one gallon 
of molasses (no sugar), perhaps three or four pounds of 
rice, seven to fourteen pounds of Ohio flour (not very 
white, but costing $"] or $8 a barrel), a little box of corn 
meal (three or four pounds), and possibly some raisins, — 
these constitute the commissary outfit for a trip. The 
total bill for the whole summer in the case of an eco- 
nomical lad will be only about fourteen dollars. Some 
men are so mean as to steal from another's pittance, so 
that each keeps guard of his own. Besides food, each 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 407 

must buy two dozen hooks of various sizes and a half- 
dozen skeins of fish line. 

At about the first of May, having attended to the affairs 
at home and having outfitted for a two or three months' 
cruise, we all get aboard the schooner at about the full 
tide and hoist the sails ; off we float past Bassing Beach 
and White Head and through the ledges, Minot's Light- 
house is not yet built, not even the old iron one ; but our 
skipper knows every rock as well as a person knows his 
own fingers by feeling. 

This is the first fare of the summer, and we are bound 
for a more southerly coast ; say, off Cape May, N. J. 
If the wind is a raw one from the east, we shall beat 
out slowly past Provincetown, but from there down on 
the outside of the Cape we can make a good run to the 
fishing ground in three days. During that time we are 
busy getting the bait and the jigs ready for fish. We have 
jig molds for running a little melted lead about the shaft 
of each hook, so that hook and sinker are one. Each jig 
is tied to the end of a line and sometimes another hook 
is fastened a few inches above the jig. 

Bait boxes holding two buckets each are made with a 
fi.xture to hang them upon the outside of the schooner's 
rail, three on one side. The bait consists of three or 
four barrels of pogies, menhaden (something like herring), 
and the same amount of clams. The fish for bait are 
ground up in a mill somewhat like a huge coffee mill 
standing upon the deck. A half bushel may be ground in 
five or ten minutes, and a few clams are mixed into them. 
This makes good provender for mackerel, and is put into 
the bait boxes to be strewn upon the water where schools 
of the fish may be enticed. 

Having arrived off Cape May, according to the cap- 
tain's reckoning or his guess, the vessel sets herself to 
fish from the broadside. The captain shouts : " Hook on 
the main boom tackle on the port side ! " " Haul down 



4o8 HISTORY OF COIIASSET. 

the jib!" " Ease off the main sheet ! " " Haul the tackle 
forward!" "Haul taut and make fast!" "Let off the 
fore sheet ! " 

Then the captain — we ought to say "skipper" — 
goes to the bait box in the middle of the windward 
side of the schooner, and throws a paddleful of ground 
bait into the water towards the bow, and another 
paddleful towards the stern, scattering it as broadly as 
possible. Then he watches with his mackerel line baited 
in the water. After drifting thirty or fifty feet he 
throws morf^ bait, feeling again at his line to get the first 
bite. 

Meanwhile the crew are idling in any way they choose, 
until suddenly they hear a "bang" into the bottom of a 
tub, and then the qui'ck flipping of a shiny mackerel 
which the skipper has " landed." This is the signal for 
all hands to get their fish lines into the water. They fix 
little bits of tough pork rind upon the barbed hooks and 
cast out two lines apiece thirty feet long off the side of the 
schooner. They are all fishing from one side, the skipper 
in the best place, just abaft the mainmast, and all ten 
arranged upon either side of him. 

The hooks hang about four or six feet under water, 
and if the school of mackerel is a vigorous one, they bite 
as soon as the baited hook strikes the water. The bite is 
a strong grab and then a shoot to one side ; but you pull 
the shiny victim hand over hand to the side of the vessel, 
and, reaching down your right hand, you catch the line 
about one foot above the mackerel's mouth, lifting him 
over the rail. One sharp slat and he is thrown into your 
fish tub or barrel by a jerk that tears the hook out of his 
jaw and hurls the hook out again with its tough bait into 
the water for its next victim. 

Meantime perhaps your other line has caught a fish, 
and you must pull him in at once or he will swim across 
the other lines and bring some indelicate remarks upon 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 409 

you from your angry fishermates. If the fishing is good, 
every man is pulling first one of his lines and then the 
other as fast as his hands can fly. 

When ten fishermen are all thus busy snapping up the 
fish over the sides of the vessel, it is a spectacle never 
to be forgotten. A constant stream of mackerel, with 
their silver sides gleaming like so many snowflakes, fall 
over the ship's rail into the fish tubs of dying companions. 
Such biting lasts for two hours sometimes, when perhaps 
a shark comes along, tearing hooks and lines which have 
caught in his skin, and terrorizing the school of mackerel 
so that not one is left near the vessel. 

Perhaps we have caught thirty "wash" barrels full, 
some of the fish measuring fifteen inches in length. 
These have to be dressed while the vessel is sailing back 
again to her fishing ground, for she has drifted broadside 
about three miles an hour. 

The skipper orders his men : " Haul aft the fore 
sheet!" "Hoist the jib!" "Slack the boom tackle!" 
" Haul aft the main sheet ! " " Right the helm ! " " Un- 
hook the boom tackle ! " 

The vessel gets under way and then is brought around 
upon another tack towards the place where the fish began 
to bite. The skipper gets the schooner well balanced on 
her course, gauging the helm so that she will keep straight 
ahead ; then he leaves the helm lashed while he joins the 
crew in dressing up their thirty barrels of fish. 

Two men work at each barrel, the splitter and the 
gibber. The splitter has a board across the top of his 
barrel, and, reaching down into the barrel with his left 
hand, he places a fish upon the board. With one stroke 
of the knife the back of the fish is laid open from nose to 
tail along one side of the backbone, and the fish is pushed 
off into the gibber's tub. This gibber, with a deft move- 
ment of thumb and fingers, tears out the entrails and 
gills ; then he throws the fish into another barrel having 



4IO HISTORY OF CO II ASSET. 

two pailfuls of water to soak out the blood preparatory to 
the salting-down process. 

When the vessel is back again the fish are not found 
very plentiful ; but the skipper throws out bait now and 
then or the men throw it out, while a few fish are hauled 
in at intervals. When it gets dusk no more fishing for 
that day is possible. The sails are furled and the boom 
is crotched and a lantern is hung in the main peak hal- 
yards ; thus she floats for the night. All hands go down 
into the cabin to drink a cup of strong cold tea and to 
munch some hard bread or to eat the hard bread crumbed 
into water sweetened with molasses. No cooking is done 
to-night, for the fishing has been so good that no one 
would "knock off" to build a fire. In a few minutes all 
are on deck again to finish dressing their fish. 

Then comes the salting. Each splitter takes a candle 
and an old two-tined table fork down into the hold. He 
makes a candlestick of the fork by jabbing it into the 
inside of the hogshead halfway up the staves, holding 
the candle between the tines of the fork. This gives 
light upon the fish as they are packed into the bottom of 
the hogshead. Getting his salt tub ready, the splitter 
shouts to his gibber above at the hatch, " Fish ho ! " The 
gibber empties a wash barrel of split fish upon the deck 
beside the hatch, and begins to drop the fish two at a time 
lying skin against flesh into a tub of salt in the hold. 
The splitter, now become salter, takes one fish in each ^ 
hand, rubbing them flesh downward into the salt ; and then 
placing them together again as they were, skin against 
flesh, he packs them into the bottom of the big hogshead 
in the light of the candle, skin up in plenty of salt. 

After the salting down the decks are washed, the oil 
trousers are taken off, and faces and hands are bathed in 
salt water. The scratched hands sting with the salt, but 
fresh water is too scarce for such use. 

The watch is set and the rest of the crew s:o below to 



THE FISHING IND US TR V. 4 1 I 

sleep. The two boys of the crew take the first watch, 
one at the bow, the other at the stern. It is about eleven 
o'clock and all are tired out. The five hours until four 
o'clock in the morning are divided into eight watches, so 
that no one has to keep awake very long. 

The second hand oi^ mate takes the morning watch, and 
at four o'clock, just as the first gray streak of day is 
breaking the night off from the eastern rim of the ocean, 
he steps to the companion way and stamps upon the deck 
three times, saying, " All hands ahoy ! Up mainsail ! " 
The crew turns out, all stiff, and the chilly air strikes 
to the bones and marrow. Now, if ever, a good warm 
breakfast would be welcome ; but think what an apology 
we must have. There is no stove, only an old-fashioned 
fireplace in the little cabin. If the fire is lost it must 
be made in the clumsy tinder-box fashion, for friction 
matches were not introduced here till 1838. 

The tinder is some black burnt linen kept dry in a 
horn. A piece of flint is struck with an old steel file 
until a spark falls into the tinder. This spark lights the 
tinder and burns until a sliver of wood with a sulphur tip 
is ignited by it, when the tinder spark is crushed out and 
the burning sulphur match lights a fire of charcoal in the 
fireplace. 

Every one has to cook for himself, and the one who 
makes the fire is rewarded by having the first chance to 
cook his breakfast. If there are any fish biting, the crew 
attends first to the business of catching them. 

A pot of tea for all hangs over the fire. The first cook 
stirs some flour into molasses with a pinch of saleratus and 
salt, and this batter is cooked in a frying pan greased with 
a bit of salt pork. The name of this fried batter is " flap- 
jacks " or "flippers," and they constitute the fisherman's 
luxury. In about five minutes these are cooked, and the 
men above hear the welcome shout from the cabin, " Clear 
fire ! " Then the skipper comes with a handful of spawns 



412 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



saved from the mackerel, and fries them while the fire 
builder is eating his two flippers with his mug of tea. 
Each has his own yellow earthenware mug, his knife, 
spoon, and fork. 

When the skipper has cooked his spawn he shouts, 
" Clear fire ! " Perhaps two fishermen jump at once for the 
gangway, one with potatoes and the other with a mackerel. 
The man who first places his uncooked food upon a chest 
at the foot of the stairs and shouts " chested " has his turn 
at the fire. These two struggle to get down first, but the 
potatoes and mackerel are badly mashed or even hurled 
upon the floor, and the men themselves perhaps are 
bruised a good deal before one may shout "chested"! 
The same frying pan does for all. The same rough fare 
is endured by all. The fishing business is no soft sine- 
cure ; it is rough and tough, and the men are earning what 
they get. 

After several weeks of good and bad luck the vessel 
works along towards the north and east to the neighbor- 
hood of Block Island towards home. If the catch has 
amounted to one hundred and fifty or two hundred 
barrels of fish and the biting seems poor, and a good 
strong southwest wind springs up urging the vessel home- 
ward, the skipper orders the men to stop the fishing. 
"Hoist the jib!" "Set the colors!" "Give her the 
whole of the mainsheet, boys!" "Away with her about 
northeast and we '11 see how nigh we can hit Gay Head ! " 

We are off for home, where families and friends await 
us and where the owners of the vessel are anxious to 
know whether we have brought back enough fish to pay 
for their investment. A couple of days' sailing gets us 
into Massachusetts Bay, and perhaps we come creeping 
back into old Cohasset Harbor before daylight some June 
morning. With the return of the fishing vessels from 
this first trip there is bound up the good fortune of many 
Cohasset small boys. 



THE FT S FUNG IND US TRY. 4 1 3 

One of them now living, who remembers as far back as 
1834,* recalls the busy experience of packing mackerel 
into the barrels and half barrels at the wharves of our Cove. 
Boys from ten to fifteen years of age could earn about 
twenty-five cents by a hard day's work, packing about a 
dozen barrels of mackerel containing two hundred fish in 
each at two cents a barrel. The winter's school was ended 
by the time of the June return of fishing vessels, so that 
a score of industrious boys over ten years of age flocked 
upon our little wharves at the " chance to pack." 

The barrels used had been made in our cooper shops, of 
which there were several at the Cove. Zealous Bates, 
Thaddeus Lawrence, John Parker, George Stetson, Henry 
Hall, and others had cooper shops of large output. The 
staves of these barrels were made of pine wood. A 
sufficient number to make a barrel were held together 
by an iron hoop at the top, while a fire of shavings inside 
upon the ground heated and softened them so that the 
lower ends were drawn together by a rope and windlass. 
They were hooped by strips of white oak or birch or 
maple and headed by boards of pine ; then they were 
tumbled upon the wharves by the hundred, costing in the 
neighborhood of seventy-five cents apiece. All winter 
long these barrels and half barrels, and in later years 
firkins, were being made by our bygone coopers. 

The salt industry was another enterprise connected with 
our fisheries. As early as the year 1836,! which we are 
now recalling, there were many acres of salt works in the 
vicinity of Sandy Cove and of Beach Island. 

The accompanying map, which is taken from a govern- 
ment coast survey of that period, indicates the positions 
and proportions of these salt vats. The process % was 

* S. T. Snow. 

t Captain Wm. V. Creed says: "When we first went fishing, 1828, salt was not 
made here, but was brought from Cape Cod." 

X Details as told by Nathaniel Treat, who made and tended salt works for many 
years. 




Part of a Map, 1852. 
Showing location of salt works at Sandy Cove, Quarry Point, and Sandy Beach. 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 415 

the simple one of evaporating our sea water under the 
heat of the sun, leaving a coarse, crude salt. 

The water was pumped out of the sea by windmills * 
carrying about twenty-six yards of canvas upon four 
arms. The water pipes were pine logs bored through the 
center by long four-inch augers, and these logs fitted end 
in end along down the beach to the low-water line. Some 
can still be seen at Sandy Cove beach weighted down by 
stones. The pumps at the foot of the windmills sucked 
up the salt water through the logs and emptied it into 
level wooden vats about twenty feet wide and two or 
three times as long, built upon the level marshes at the 
top of the beach. 

The water, about six inches deep, remained in these 
vats from one to six days, when it had become so much 
evaporated as to taste quite salty. This was then allowed 
to run out into another vat about one third as long called 
the "weak pickle vat." 

The next vat into which the water was run was called 
the "strong pickle vat." When the salt began to form 
like very thin ice upon the strong pickle it was flowed off 
into the salt vat, making about four or five inches deep of 
the strongest possible brine. A little more evaporating 
was necessary to precipitate a bed of salt about three 
inches deep in the salt vat, ready for use if it had not 
turned bitter. 

About one quarter of a pound of salt could be pro- 
cured out of every gallon of sea water. If at any time 
the rain threatened, there were little roofs to be slid over 
the vats so that the brine would not be delayed too much 
in precipitating its burden of salt. 

When the schooners came in from the fishing cruises 
and the orders were sent for twenty hogsheads or more of 
salt, it was shoveled out of the little salt houses and 

* Windmill Point is so named from one of these mills which used to stand 
upon it. 



4 1 6 HIS TOR V OF con A SSE T. 

loaded upon ox carts to be hauled to the Cove, and thus to 
furnish one more product of a self-sufficient community. 

The boys packed the fish with this salt according to 
three grades of the mackerel, the smallest and leanest ones 
being the third quality. The deputy fish inspectors ap- 
proved of the barrels and marked them, when they were 
headed up and turned upon their bilge and enough water 
poured into the bunghole to saturate the fish. Then they 
were ready to be shipped to Boston or elsewhere to market, 
wherever commerce might bear them as our own Cohasset 
fish. 

After the first cruise to the south in the spring, our 
schooners fished during the summer months on shorter 
voyages in northern waters, going sometimes as far north 
as the Bay of Chaleur. The fish grew fatter and larger 
during the summer, and they bit the hook more readily. 
Many persons who stayed at home during the first fishing 
trip to finish their planting would go upon the later ones 
when fishing was more profitable. Some of the largest 
and fattest fish caught in the month of August were 
called "bloaters " ; they were only slightly salted and then 
dried, making as toothsome a tidbit as ever came out of 
the sea. Many a friend rejoiced to be remembered by a 
fisherman's gift of "bloaters" upon the return of a suc- 
cessful voyage. 

The luck of some years was to catch only small fish or 
"tinkers," about ten inches long, and the whole commu- 
nity felt the disappointent. When the season was favor- 
able and large cargoes of number one mackerel were cap- 
tured, the wives could indulge in new gowns, the children 
could be sent longer to school, and the debts for living- 
expenses when the voyages had been failures could all be 
paid off. The business furnished a living for about six 
hundred men and boys with their families, and for a 
hundred years it was the main source of income for the 
town. 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



417 



The busy scene of forty or more vessels at our Cove 
all through the summer in those early days has long passed 
aviray, but the memory of it is still cherished by many 
citizens whose annual income was based upon the moods 
of shiny mackerel. 



LIST OF VESSELS AT COHASSET IN THE YEAR 1836 LICENSED 

FOR COASTING OR FOR MACKERELING BY LABAN 

SOUTHER, DEPUTY COLLECTOR. 



Triton. 


Stewart. 




William Tell. 


Albicore. 


Friendship. 


Ino. 




Lizard. 


Eunice. 


Lion. 


Morgiana. 




Myra. 


Beaver. 


Two Friends. 


King. 




Susan. 


Caroline. 


Eagle. 


Essex. 




Sun. 


Ellen. 


Industry. 


Rebecca. 




Lady Washington. 


Sarah Young. 


General Marion. 


Magnet. 




Seloma. 


Mary. 


Ursula. 


Vl'illiam. 




Leonidas. 


Elizabeth. 


Profit. 


Byron. 




Bela Bates. 




Two Sisters. 


Sarah. 




Rubicon. 




The sloops Phenix and (jlance were 


packets between Cohasset and Boston. 


MACKEREL 


PACKED 


AT COHASSET FROM i 


815 TO 1840. 


Bris. 


Brls. 


Bris. 


Hf. brls. Hf. brls. 


Hf. brls. 


No. I. 


No. 2. 


No. 3. 


No. I. No. 2. 


No. 3. Total. 


1815-1816 81 


267 


80 


49 12 


459 


1816-1817 418 


331 


563 


83 52 


6 1,383 



Herring, 35 brls 
1817-1818 368 

Herring, 59 brls, 



No. I 



258 



1.025 



241 



62 



Cod, 21 bris., 17 hf. brls. Hake, 21 bris., 5 hf. brls. 



I8I8-I8I9 


657 


508 


1,263 


159 


33 


9 


2.529 


Herring, 


187 bris. 


Cod, 52 


brls. 










1819-1820 


408 


658 


851 


54 


35 


9 


1,966 


1820-1821 


241 


361 


I.S32 


33 


4 




2.153 


1821-1822 


120 


1.659 


2,129 


116 


85 




4,009 


1 822-1823 


501 


2.437 


4,076 


320 


389 


46 


7.362 


1823-1824 


308 


3.461 


4.755 


312 


1.301 


66 


9.364 


1824-1825 


1,601 


5.339 


8.039 


1.374 


2,157 


29 


16.760 


1825-1826 


1,114 


5.090 


9,691 


792 


2,386 


72 


17.520 


1826-1827 


1,625 


4.517 


2,070 


743 


793 


II 


8,986 


1827-1828 


3.302 


3. 211 


2.64s 


1,004 


747 


4 


10,036 


1828-1829 


2,102 


S.311 


5.157 


1.705 


2,339 




14.592 


1829-1830 


1,629 


3.373 


8,463 


1.438 


1.551 


4 


14.942 


1830-1831 


1,605 


4.254 


10,879 


1,666 


2.355 


946 


19,222 


1831-1832 


1.959 


5.737 


9.180 


1,246 


2,803 


884 


19.343 


I 832- I 833 


298 


2.539 


6,142 


814 


2,207 


363 


10,672 


1833-1834 


727 


2,811 


5.027 


2,181 


3.107 


123 


11,271 


1834-1835 


1.034 


2,266 


5.774 


2,262 


2,918 


51 


11,790 



41 8 HISTORY OF CON ASSET. 

MACKEREL PACKED AT COHASSET FROM 1815 TO 1840 {continued). 

Brls. Brls. Brls. Hf. bris. Hf. brls. Hf. bris. 

No. I. No. 2. No. 3. No. I. No. 2. No. 3. Total. 

1835-1836 722 1,543 5.948 990 1,475 60 9,503 

1836-1837 658 2,662 6,525 1,351 2,133 195 11,689 

1837-1838 80 ■ 2,708 8,247 1,054 2,563 108 13,001 

1838-1839 803 971 6,610 2,118 1,326 no 10,410 

1839-1840 504 741 4,768 1,035 I.561 no 8,072 

From 1834 there were 14 and % barrels packed, which are added into the totals. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE FISHING INDUSTRY (CONTINUED). 

BEFORE continuing the account of our fishing in- 
dustry it might be well to refer to the shipbuilding 
which was steadily carried on at the Cove. 

After the year 1819, the date last mentioned in our 
previous list of vessels built at our Cove, the Enrollment 
books in the Custom House at Boston do not have a full 
record of the vessels turned out by our ship carpenters; 
but the following list for the fifteen years preceding 1837 
has been erleaned from various sources : — * 



LIST OF VESSELS BUILT AT COHASSET FROM 1822 TO 1837. 



n 
Q 


Name. Tonnage. 


Owner. 


Builder. 


Master. 


1822 


Joseph . . . 


60 


Joshua Hatch. 


Abel Story. 


1822 John Thomas. 


1825 


Neptune . 


83 


Jas. C. Doane. 




1825 Job Bailey. 


,, 


Gen. Warren 


71 


Caleb Lothrop. 


Bela Bates. 


„ Geo. Lawrence. 


1827 


Profit . . 


66 


Jas. Collier and 
Samuel Hall. 




1827 Saml. Hall. 


1828 


Wm. Tell . 


62 


John Bales & Co. 


Bela Bates. 


1828 Jas. H. Merritt. 


1829 


Magnet . . 


58 


Peter Lothrop. 


Peter Lothrop. 


1829 Joseph Briggs. 


" 


Morgiana . . 


60 


Caleb Lothrop & 
Co. 


Jona. B. Bates. 


„ Henry Damon. 


,j 


Elizabeth . . 


S8 


Jas. Collier. 


Elisha Merritt. 


„ Luth. Jenkins. 


1830 


Sarah . . 


65 


John Bates & Co. 


Bela Bates. 


1830 B. Litchfield. 


,, 


Myra . . 


56 


Abrm.H. Tower. 


Jona. B. Bates. 


Caleb Souther. 


183I 


Susan . . 


64 


John Bates. 


II II 


Freeman Gannett. 


1832 


Caroline . 


70 


1. 11 


II II 


Nichols Pratt. 


,, 


Bela Bales . 


55 


Abrm.H. Tower. 


Bela Bates. 


Isaiah Hyland. 


„ 


Neptune . 


85 


James C. Doane. 


II II 


Job Bailey. 


„ 


Oneco . , . 


88 


Nichols Tower. 


Jona. B. Bates. 


Warren Orcutt. 


1833 


Tower . . 
(brig) 


121 


Nichols Tower & 
Co. 


II II 


Wm. Litchfield. 



•Barber's Historical Collections, p. 455, says: "In five years preceding 1837 
there were 17 vessels built in Cohasset, the tonnage of which was 2,765, valued at 
^110,600." 



420 



HISTORY OF con ASSET. 



LIST OF VESSELS BUILT AT COHASSET FROM 1822 TO 1837 
(continued) . 



M 



Name. Tonnage. 


Owner. 


Builder. 


Master. 






Sml. N. Gushing. 

Jona. B. Bates. 
I Bela Bates. 
;W. H. Stoddard. 






1834 


Sarah Abigail. 211 
(brig) 


/jas. Stoddard. 

SI. Stockbridge. 

: Lewis Willcutt. 
1 Paul Bates, Jr. 
' Thos. Bourne. 
^Wm. Bates. 


Jona. B. Bates. 


Elisha Barker. 


1835 


Russell , . .183 
(brig) 


Yarmouth and 
Philadelphia 
people. 


Jona. B. Bates. 




" 


Odeon . . .119 


For Boston and 
Cape people. 


Jona. B. Bates. 




„ 


Eunice ... 50 


A. H. Tower. 






„ 


Eagle ... 40 


Nichols Tower. 






1836 


Sarah Young . 54 
Eolus . . .117 


Josiah 0. Law- 
rence & Co. 
Jas. C. Doane. 






1837 


Sulla .... 146 
(brig) 


For Yarmouth & 
Philadelphia 
people. 


Jona. B. Bates. 




„ 


Talisman . . 146 


A. H. Tower & 


Jona. B. Bates. 






(brig) 


Co. 


. 





It will be noticed that in the year 1833 Jonathan B. 
Bates commenced to build a series of larger vessels than 
ever had been built in our harbor. Besides the larger 
schooners, he set up each year a frame for a square-rigged 
two-master called a "brig." These were not very large, 
it must be confessed, when compared with a modern thou- 
sand-ton brig, but they measured up to two hundred tons 
and made a deal of employment for our ship carpenters. 

Contracts were taken for men living in Boston and in 
Yarmouth and as far away as Philadelphia. It would not 
be a wild guess to imagine that some of these brigs be- 
came whalers in the Pacific Ocean and freighters in foreign 
seas. Occasionally another little fishing schooner was 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



421 



built; but from the time these larger craft began to be 
reared in our shipyards there were very few of the small 
ones undertaken. In fact, there were only a few more fish- 
ing craft needed in our Cove after this time, because the 
harbor and wharfage could not accommodate more than 
sixty or seventy of them. Furthermore, several of our 
vessel owners purchased their schooners from shipbuilders 
of other towns, so that our own carpenters were not needed 




Mackerel Schooner of 1850. 

in many cases. And finally, the reason for the failure to 
build more fishing vessels was that the fish industry of 
our town soon began to wane. The climax was reached 
at about 1850, as we shall see a few pages further on. 

When our ship carpenters found insufficient employ- 
ment at building for the fish business, they began to 
undertake, as we saw, the construction of merchantmen of 



42 2 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

the two-masted, square-rigged type called brigs. They 
even had to venture beyond the local demand and they 
took contracts for Boston owners and for others. Besides 
Jonathan B. Bates there were several other master car- 
penters of that period, including James Stoddard and Isaac 
Hall. 

In the year 1841, the largest undertaking up to that 
time, the bark Lewis was launched. This was the first 
one to sport three masts, and being a 218-ton merchant 
vessel, it was not a small enterprise for the owners. But 
the largest of all vessels launched into our harbor by 
Cohasset carpenters is said to have been the Greenwich 
in the year 1850. 

She was over three times the size of the bark Lewis, 
measuring 788 tons and having two decks instead of one, 
as the schooners had. She was one hundred and sixty 
feet long, so that when she slid off the ways from the 
Barrett place she stretched nearly the whole distance 
across our little Cove. Her three masts were rigged with 
square sails, so she was called a "ship." Many who are 
living to-day remember the Greenwich, and her prestige 
is the more clear because so few vessels have been built 
since then. 

Two other ships, the Tagus and the Hellespont, both 
of smaller size, are said to have come from the same yard ; 
but the time of building ocean carriers, of making sails, 
of twisting ropes,* and of rigging the spars of these ves- 
sels is wholly and forever past. 

One of the last of the shipbuilding efforts was in 1872, 
when the trim little pleasure schooner Gracie {fifty-four 
tons) was built at an expense of some twenty thousand dol- 
lars for Edward E. Tower. She has floated a dozen years 
or more at our harbor stripped of her rigging, and is slowly 
rotting away, to become as all the others — vanished. 

* There is said to have been a long ropewalk on Bassing Beach for the manu- 
facture of ropes used in rigging our vessels. 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



423 



The last of all vessels built here was the Henrietta 
Frances, a seventy-four-tonner, built by William Eddy 
for a Cohasset syndicate of nine owners in the year 
1883. 

The following list of vessels built in Cohasset from 1838 
to the last one in 1883 is by no means a complete list; 
but for some unknown reason the records kept by the 
deputy collector of the port of Cohasset are not all pre- 
served in the Custom House. These have been culled 
from some of the books in the Boston office by many 
hours of hard searching, but the author feels a keen dis- 
appointment in not being able to find records of the Kono- 
hassett of Captain Daniel T. Lothrop, the Grand Turk, 
the China, and several other vessels which were built here 
and which may be still remembered by some of the older 
readers of this narrative. 



LIST OF VESSELS BUILT IN COHASSET FROM i£ 
ONE IN 1883. 



TO THE LAST 



Name. 



Tons. 



Rienzi 



At- 



184 1 



1843 



1844 

1845 

1848 
1849 



Deborah 

wood , . . 
Lewis . . . 
(three-masted 

bark) 
Casket . . . 

(brig) 

Speedwell , . 

(brig) 
Talisman . . 

Anne & Julia . 

(brig) 
Alniatia . . . 

(brig) 
Naiad Queen . 
Oriola . . . 



52 



53 
218 



155 

los 
74 

131 
99 

SI 

85 



Owner. 



Caleb Lothrop & 
Co. 



Geo. Hall & Bro 
Nichols Tower 
and three others. 

David Wilson & 
Josiah O. Law 
rence. ' 

A. H. Tower & 
Caleb Lothrop. 
Laban Souther & 
VVm. Pratt, Jr 
A. H. Tower & 
Caleb Lothrop. 
Laban Souther & 
Joseph Smith. 
A. H. Tower. 
Caleb Lothrop 



Carpenter. 



Jona. B. Bates. 

Jona. B. Bates. 

Jona. B. Bates. 
Jas. Stoddard. 

Isaac Hall. 



Master. 



Bela Brown. 



Jeremiah Long. 



David Wilson. 



William Pratt. 



1866 Elkanah Rogers. 
1863 Jos. McCloud. 



424 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



LIST OF VESSELS BUILT IN COHASSET FROM i5 
ONE IN 1883 (^continued). 



TO THE LAST 





Name. Tons. 


Owner. 


Carpenter. 


Master. 


1850 


Camilla ... 80 
Greenwich . . 788 


Isaac Hall & 

Geo. Hall. Jr. 
Built for Thacher 


Isaac Hall. 


1853 Zebina Godfrey. 


i8si 


(ship) 
McCloud . . 80 


Magoun & Co. 
A. H. Tower. 


Isaac Hall. 


Jos. McCloud. 


1852 


Mary Hall . . 66 


Hall Bros. 






i860 


Forest Oak . 112 


A. H. Tower. 
t Caleb Lothrop 


Isaac Hall. 




1861 


Peerless ... 85 


\ Isaac Hall. 
1. John Ainslee. 


Isaac Hall. 




i86t^ 


Katie Hall . . 71 


Abr'm H. Tower. 


Isaac Hall. 




1866 


Morning Star . 81 


John Bates. 


Isaac Hall. 




1872 


Gracie ... 54 


Edw. E. Tower. 


Jona. B. Bates. 




1883 


Henrietta Fran- 










ces . . . . 74 


William Eddy 
and eight others. 


\Vm. Eddv. 





But let us leave the shipbuilding and return to the fish- 
ing business In the last chapter the manner of taking 
mackerel in the year 1836 was reviewed, and some sta- 
tistics were given of the vessels employed and of the 
amount of fish that were packed. 

There was an increase in the amount of fishing carried 
on during all the first half of this century after the War 
of 1 8 12, so that the port of Cohasset became of no small 
importance among the New England sea towns. 

In the year 1845 we had the honor of being the fourth 
fishing port of Massachusetts in the amount marketed. 



Gloucester packed 
Boston „ 

Wellfleet 
Cohasset ,, 



48,711^ barrels. 
17.584^ 



But this was not our banner year, because it was not 
until the year 1848, memorable for the California gold 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



425 



discoveries, that we reached the climax of 22,967 barrels.* 
The next year we dropped off seven thousand barrels. 
The third year after, in 185 1, we rose again to 22,712^ ; 
but from that time forward the catch dwindled with vary- 
ing fortunes until the close of our fisheries in the year 
1885. 

In the year 1851 there were forty-four vessels and five 
hundred and sixty-one men and boys employed in the 
mackerel business, and it will be of interest to read the 
names of those vessels, for they were the ones also of the 
banner year 1848. 



LIST FOR YEAR 
RECORDED BY 

Belle. 

Sarah Young. 

Sarah Ann. 

Stuart. 

Essex. 

Conanchet. 

Paragon. 

Clio. 

Profit. 

Sarah. 

Deborah Atwood. 

James Henry. 

Ophelia. 



1851, SCHOONERS 
LABAN SOUTHER. 

Rienzi. 

Oriole. 

Clara. 

Naiad Queen. 

Harmony. 

Star of Hope. 

Stromboli. 

Joshua Bates. 

John & George. 

Nerissa. 

Sun. 

Camilla. 

Brutus. 



LICENSED OR OTHERWISE 
DEPUTY COLLECTOR. 

Henry Knox. 

Charles Augusta. 

Georgiana. 

Antelope. 

McCloud. 

Morgiana. 

Bela Bates. 

Catherine. 

Albicore. 

Rebecca. 

Matilda. 

Eliza Ann. 

Triton. 



* The annual catch of pickled fish from the year 1840, which \vc recorded in the 
last chapter, to the banner year 1848, is as follows : — 





Brls. 


Rrls. 


Brls. 


Hlf. Brls. Hlf. Brls. Hlf. Brls. 




Year. 


No. I. 


No. 2. 


No. 3. 


No. I. No. 2. No. 3. 


Total. 


1840 


329 


613 


3.055 


959 990 96 


5,020 


184I 


1,312 


723 


2,326 


Swordfish, 35 brls. 


4.361 


1842 


1,469 


t,7i7 


2,868 




6,054 


1843 


2,304 


1,116 


3.039 


Swordfish, 44. 


6,459 


1844 


1,775 


1,817 


4,266 


Halibut, 5. Swordfish, 6. 


7,858 


184s 


1,684 


6,290 


9,609 


Cod, 2. 


17,583 


1846 


857 


2,863 


5,057 


1,424 2,277 1,551 
2,354 eighth brls. 


11,885 


1847 


5.747 


4,567 


7,053 




17,367 


1848 


9,211 


4,710 


9.045 




22,967 



426 HISTORY OF CO II ASSET. 

Susan. Myra. Stranger. 

Director. Ursula. Mozart. 

Industry. Lake. Leader. 

Eagle. Sarah Jane. Sloop Glance. 

Charles Carroll. Anaconda. Talisman, 

Pocahontas. General Marion. Clara Jane. 

Total, 57. 

It was during this period that a new nation of people 
became introduced into this New England community. 

It was the Portuguese from the Azores or Western 
Islands. 

Living upon those Atlantic islands, two thousand miles 
across the waves, were many hardy sailors and fishermen, 
who held a national allegiance to Portugal. There was em- 
ployment here in the fishing business for those who were 
enterprising enough to venture to this Western continent. 

It is said that the first of this nation to venture among 
us was a boy named Antoine Martin, who was brought by 
Captain Nickerson in a whaler from the island of Pico, 
one of the group of Azores. This was as early as the 
year 1840, perhaps earlier; but the fame of the New 
England fisheries soon brought many more Portuguese 
fishermen. By the year 1844 many of these hardy young 
men used to man our Cohasset fishing schooners during 
the summer, and when winter came with its slack work 
they would sail off, a large crew of them, down South to 
New Orleans, where they labored at loading cotton upon 
vessels for Europe. 

Thus between fishing and stevedoring these industrious 
men soon gained a footing in their new country. 

The first family to be established here was that of 
Manuel Antoine; and after his others, including those of 
Joseph F. Martin, Joseph F. Enos, and Joseph Jason, 
came to set up their hearthstones among the New Eng- 
landers who had been here for two centuries. 

To these earliest ones must be added John Morgan, 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



427 



Joseph F. Ennice, Frank Thomas, Frank Silvia, and George 
M. Ennice. It did not take many years for the more 
capable of these Portuguese to become skippers of fishing 
schooners. 

The following are some who came to bear the title of 
captain in the later years of our fisheries : — 

Manuel P. Valine. John F. Smith (Ferara). Manuel F. Antoine. 



Manuel S. Enos. 
Joseph S. Enos. 



Antoine Joseph. 
Frank F. Maitin. 



Joseph E. Fratus. 




Drawn by Uaniel Tower. 

Map showing Wharves Used at the Close of our Fishing Days. 



1. Alfred Whittington. 

2. Abram Hall. 

3. Harry Doane. (Stone Wharf.) 

4. Ephraim Snow, formerly N. Tower. 

5. C. H. Willard. (Coal.) 

6. James Collier. 

7. Caleb Nichols. 



8. Caleb Lothrop. 

9. J. Oakes Lawrence. (Doane V\'harf.) 

10. John Bates. 

11. A. H. Tower. 

12. Laban Souther. 

13 and 14. Tower Brothers. 
15. Government, since 1856. 



The increase of Portuguese families has continued from 
the beginning with more rapidity than that of the New 
England descendants, so that now the number of them is 
estimated at about four hundred persons. 



428 HISTORY OF CONASSET. 

Intermarriages have taken place with the descendants 
of the original English pioneers and with the descendants 
of Irish newcomers, so that in many cases the dark eyes 
and skin of the Southern race have become part of the 
common stock. 

At about the time when these people from the Azores 
were coming here to join our fishing force, there occurred 
a tragedy which illustrates some of the dangers of a life 
at the mackerel line. It was the wreck of our schooner 
Maine, off Cape Cod, in the year 1846. 

At nine o'clock in the evening of August 16 the Maine, 
with Captain Joshua Litchfield and his crew * of ten, was 
pitching and heaving upon the sea at the entrance of 
Massachusetts Bay. They were "hove to" for the night 
and the watch was set; but who could see anything? 
The murky air that blew hard from the southwest brought 
with it a heavy burden of vapor from the land, which was 
condensed into a black fog by the cool water. There was 
coming towards the helpless little craft a huge ocean 
packet, the Hibernia, just started on her way from Boston 
to England (one of the early Cunarders). The wind was 
just what the packet wanted, for she was one of those 
old-fashioned side-wheel steamboats that were fitted with 
masts and sails to help out their steam power. She swept 
forward driven by the paddle wheels and the gale through 
the thick fog. 

Suddenly there was a crash and a heavy thud near the 
bow, and then one of the paddle wheels began to crunch 
the masts and the shattered frame of the little fishing 
schooner. The crew of fishermen were swept under the 
great wheel like bits of rubbish in a mill race. In a mo- 
ment the scraping and crashing was done and nothing 
could be heard in the blackness but the shrieking of the 
gale through the rigging. 

*Meshech Litchfield, Benjamin Litchfield, Martin Wheelwright, Isaiah Lincoln, 
Francis M. Lincoln, Alfred F. Wood, Joseph Bowker, Luther Litchfield, Henry 
Richardson (boy), Ezekiel Lincoln (boy). 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 429 

The captain of the packet with his startled officers and 
men rushed to the rail and looked into the sea, but there 
was nothing to be found but angry waves. The engine 
was stopped and the sailors were ordered to take in sail, 
while the black smoke was blowing in their faces. 

But the captain said, " It 's no use to stop and search 
for them poor jacks ! I once run over a sailing vessel in 
the English Channel and in five minutes I had a lifeboat 
on the spot, but not a man could be found. That was in 
the daytime and here it is a black night, and it will be an 
hour before we can get a boat to where we struck her." 

But the mate said to the captain, " It is our duty, we 
must go! " There is no word so strong to the heart of 
an Englishman as duty. A lifeboat was let down ; but it 
swamped in the rough water before a crew could get into 
it. One end of it was hooked up to let the water out, and 
the mate called for volunteers to go with him. 

They swung themselves into the boat and started off in 
the blackness ; but who could tell whether they might 
ever find the packet again, to say nothing of finding the 
crew of the shattered fishing schooner.-' But the steamer 
reversed her engine and backed up slowly over the course 
she had been running. 

Meanwhile, what of our Cohasset fishermen in the 
water .'' When the bits of wreckage came up from under 
the paddle wheel, the men who were not killed caught 
hold of spars or planks or whatever floated near. They 
called out for each other and found that six out of the 
eleven were floating in the water, holding on for dear life. 

It was a miracle that any escaped being crushed in the 
debris. The skipper, Joshua Litchfield, of Beechwood, 
was probably wounded seriously, for after holding on for 
some twenty minutes he loosed his grip and was heard no 
more to speak. 

The other five began to plan for what fate might await 
them. They dared not get too close to each other for 



43 O HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

fear that in the spasm of drowning, one man might catch 
another and both would perish ; so they floated in the cold 
water, cheering up one another with what scanty hope 
they had. They began to shout, thinking that possibly 
a boat might have been lowered from the packet. Their 
voices were weak in such a gale ; but when the wind would 
lull they all would shout together the shout of the despair- 
ing man. A half hour had gone by, another half hour ten 
times as long as the first dragged on, and the hope of seeing 
a boat from the packet was about given up ; and yet occa- 
sionally they would raise their voices again to bear their 
anguish across the black waters. 

Meanwhile the brave mate with his crew in the lifeboat 
was rowing anxiously and then stopping betimes to shout 
and to listen. The wind was their compass, and they 
knew that if any shouting was done by the crew of fisher- 
men, that shouting would come to them easier than theirs 
to the fishermen. And it was so ; for presently a voice 
was heard off in the darkness, and they bent to their oars 
might and main for many minutes, then they shouted and 
waited. No voice ! Would they miss it } Had they 
gone in the wrong direction .-* 

After a while another voice came plainer than the first ; 
and soon they were pulling into their boat the exhausted, 
half-drowned crew of Cohasset fishermen. They searched 
for others besides the five, but found none. 

They searched for the crushed schooner, but no sign of 
it save the few bits of wreckage was ever seen. 

Back towards the steamer they rowed. One poor water- 
soaked fisherman lay in the bottom of the boat chilled to 
the very bones and too weak to recover circulation ; but 
one of the men at the oars who saw the need of the 
sufferer worked off his own shirt from his back while still 
keeping stroke, and wrapped it around the poor man who 
lay under his thwart. 

The brave men got their burdens aboard the big packet, 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



431 



and the captain turned her bow towards Halifax, Nova 
Scotia. There the recovered fishermen were given to the 
care of our American consul, who secured them passage 
to Boston after some days' delay. 

Before they reached home their people had been con- 
vinced that all were lost. A Provincetown fishing boat 
had picked up the body of a man near the Cape, and 
bringing it home with them placed it upon the wharf for 
some one to identify. It happened that a young man from 
Beechwood was there in Provincetown, and he recognized 
his familiar townsman Joshua Litchfield, the skipper of 
the ill-fated Maine. The body was sent to Cohasset and 
the funeral was held. Many sad hearts were gathered at 
that funeral who feared that the rest of the crew had like- 
wise perished, and that not even the dead bodies might 
ever return to their native town. 

But that very day the rescued five * returned. The 
dead skipper had reached home first, and the living came 
to tell the sad story of the sea.f 

There are many other tragedies of which this is a 
sample that befell the men engaged in business upon the 
sea. In one storm the following three losses of Cohasset 
vessels were reported in the Advertiser of Charlottetown, 
Prince Edward Island, October 8, 185 1 : — 

Schooner Henry Knox, of Cohasset ; Peris Turner, master. 
Ashore about four miles to the east of Tracadie Harbor. 

Schooner Charles Augusta, of Cohasset ; Joseph Edwards, 
master. Went on shore at St. Peter's Harbor. 

Schooner Naiad Queen ; S. Hunt, master. Drove on shore at 
Tracadie Harbor. 

The crews were saved in these cases, but not every 
storm was so considerate. In the annals of marine dis- 

* Isaiah Lincoln, Francis M. Lincoln, Alfred F. Wood, Joseph Bowker, Luther 
Litchfield. 

t Through the efforts of Rev. Joseph Osgood and others, the widow of the skip- 
per was given ^600 by the Cunard Company ; ;gioo more were secured for Mrs. 
Richardson. 



432 HIS TOR } ' OF COHASSE T. 

aster many entries of Cohasseters have been made ; and 
when the sea gives up her dead, who will count those that 
were drowned from among the dwellers in this humble 
village?* But what more of the business for which so 
many sacrifices were made ? 

The hard fare of the early fishermen became outgrown 
in time, so that each crew went furnished with a cook 
and with provisions of a much more palatable sort. 

In fact, it was complained by some of the sterner skip- 
pers that the fishermen were not satisfied with less than 
a hotel bill of fare. 

The expense of the business was yet further increased 
by the improved models of sailing craft that were used. 
It became very important to be the first vessel to return 
to market with a load of mackerel, so that fast sailers with 
extra topsails and flying jibs had to be used. 

More than this, the manner of taking the fish required 
a larger investment. Sweep nets came into use, which 
cost several hundred dollars each ; and when a shark or a 
school of bluefish would come ripping through one of 
them after the mackerel, both the fish and the net were lost. 

* Another tragedy of the sea which occurred in the year 1862 is told as follows : — 

The schooner Georgiana, Levi Creed, master, was on a fishing cruise along the 
coast between Cape Cod and Montauk Point, Long Island. While she was lying 
to under jib and foresail at about one o'clock in the night of May 14, the bark 
William Lord, bound for Boston from Baltimore, struck her amidships, staving in 
her bulwarks. The crew of sixteen, roused from sleep, rushed upon deck, and, 
thinking their own craft about to sink, they climbed upon the bark. 

The vessels soon freed themselves, and it was discovered that a boy of twelve 
years, Andrew H. Prouty, was left on board the schooner. 

The captain of the bark supposed the schooner must be sunk, for she had dis- 
appeared, and he took the unfortunate crew to Holmes' Hole near New Bedford. 

But the schooner was not sunk. She was manned and mastered by one fright- 
ened boy of twelve years of age alone upon the black ocean. For two days and 
two nights he was alone, steering his craft towards what he thought must be the 
shore. 

A whaleship returning to New Bedford overtook the strange-looking craft and 
boarded her to see what was the matter. When they found what had happened, 
the captain offered the boy one hundred dollars to abandon the schooner. But 
the plucky boy would not thus let the captain get possession of a good schooner. 
He said, " No, sir ! this vessel belongs to John Bates, and I 'm going to take her 
ashore." He did so, and found at New Bedford the rest of the crew. 



THE FISHING INDUSTRY. 



433 



From the period just preceding the Civil War the busi- 
ness began to dwindle, because of the scarcity of the fish 
and the increased expense of taking them. One by one 
the firms engaged in the business withdrew to invest 
their money in some more lucrative employments. At 
last the only two left were John Bates and the Tower 
Brothers. 

These firms tried to adapt themselves to the diminish- 
ing profits, but the small success of a number of years 




Mackerel Schooner of 1875. 

soon convinced them that the business was only a species 
of benevolence to their employees. They closed the fish- 
packing career of Cohasset in the year 1885, with a total 
catch that year of only two hundred and sixty barrels. 

The last fishing schooner, the Charlotte, was seized by 
the British authorities upon the coast of Nova Scotia for 
some offense, and thus ingloriously the Cohasset mackerel 
industry died. 



434 



HI STORY OF COHASSET. 



It was a fitting coincidence that the last merchants in 
the business were of the same two families which for 
more than a hundred and fifty years had pursued this 
fishing industry with success and with unmeasured profit 
to the whole town — the Tower and the Bates families. 



Year. 


No. I. 


No. 2. 


No. 3. 


No. 4. 


Total Brls. 


1849 


3,227 


5.207 


6.859 




15.293 


1850 1 


3.806 


2,290 


7.495 


1.755 


15.346 


1851 


3.193% 


5.822% 


13.69572 




22,71214 


1852 


3.479% 


3.33534 


4.701% 


100 


11,616% 


1853 


i.i9S% 


933^4 


3.95934 


1.495 


7.603I4 


1854 


807% 


1.761% 


4.848% 


174I/2 


7.59234 


1855 


378 


2,560 


5.777 


58 


8.773 


1856 


2.053% 


1.863% 


4.036% 




7.954 


1858 


1.271% 


479 


1,375% 


274 


3.128% 


1859 


1.127% 


185% 


921% 


9 


2.244% 


i860 


1.271% 


6,03of 


4.534 


14434 


11,98014 


1861 


2,148 


3.975V2 


3.135% 


1372 


9.272% 


1862 


i.865y8 


2.508% 


7.07134 


9 


11.45434 


1863 


518% 


4.335% 


10,97134 


26 


15.85278 


1864 


2,270^ 


3.632|i 


2,81814 


I 


8,722^5^- 


1865 


3.434% 


1.863^8 


3.726% 


4 


9,028 3/« 


1866 


2,854% 


i,o683/4 


3.505% 


572 


7.43434 


1867 


3.093^4 


2,360% 


4.26578 


381/2 


9.757% 


1868 


1.553% 


1.27478 


2,16214 




4.990% 


1869 


2,11578 


4.003% 


3.371% 


141 


9.631% 


1870 


1.421% 


5.774% 


3.569% 




10,765% 


187 1 


2,18314 


1.36678 


1.968% 




S.518% 


1872 


I,2l8li 


1.404% 


2.39234 




5.015% 


1873 


1,00014 


1,333% 


1,810% 




4.144% 


1874 


2.267 1/2 


1.539% 


2,651 




6,457% 


187s 


361^4 


256 


3.648% 


2 


4,268 


1876 


520% 


2,14214 


4.147% 


mVi 


6,98814 


1877 


230% 


783% 


1,8321/2 


49 


2,89578 


1878 


26614 


948I/2 


2,461 


153 


3,828% 


1879 


124 


3.28914 


1.5671/2 




4,981 


1880 


431% 


3.20178 


2,87734 


127 


6,63734 


1881 


163^8 


3.683 


4,161% 


3 


8,oio34 


1882 


6252V 


1.175^ 


622I4 




2,422^i 


1883 


I42U 


424-1% 


892-2% 


850% 


2,309to 


1884 


59A 


3i9y2 


1.32772 




i.7o6-i\ 


1885 


40 


20IA 


1874 




260-2L,- 




A MAP OK COHASStT.— Made Bsfoke the Railroad Was Built. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

STAGECOACH, PACKET, AXD RAILWAY. 

FOR a hundred and thirty years the people who settled 
in Cohasset had no regular public conveyance con- 
necting them with other towns. There was no stage- 
coach, so far as can be ascertained, before 1815. 

There were two reasons for this lateness in the means 
of travel. 

First, we were a small community lying off the line of 
public travel, because the road from Boston to Plymouth 
was cut through by way of the old Indian trail a mile or 
more west of us. 

Second, our location being upon the sea, we had an 
abundance of sailing craft as a means of transportation to 
the metropolis. 

Furthermore, there was little need of travel previous to 
the year 1800, for this community was able to produce at 
home almost the entire supply of its needs. What occa- 
sional travel was indulged was principally on foot to 
Hingham, through which town the King's Highway ran 
from Plymouth to Boston. From Hingham a -public convey- 
ance could occasionally be had over the road to Boston 
previous to the Revolutionary War. 

The young ministers who came to Cohasset when we 
were a precinct, 171 7, traveled, as we remember, upon 
horseback from Cambridge. How much hire they had to 
pay for their horses we do not know ; but as late as the 
year 1805 our townsman, Caleb Nichols, charged a dollar 
and seventy-five cents for a " Hors to Boston." The same 
old account book under date of August 6, 1800, charges 
John Nichols "Hors to Hingham $0.42." 



436 



HI ST OK Y OF C OH ASSET. 



Our public houses, the James House,* by the brook 
bearing that name, and the Tavern f owned by the Beals 
at North Cohasset, probably kept horses for public use 
besides feeding the occasional foot passengers. 

When our first post office was established in the year 
1803, April I, the small bag of mail, brought probably 
not more than twice a week, was borne upon horseback. 
Samuel Brown, the first postmaster, had a little workshop 




From a painting by F. H. SliapU- 

James House. 
As it was fifty years ago. 

built upon the southeast side of his house, the present 
home of the late Rev. Joseph Osgood, and there he de- 
livered the few letters received in the town. He probably 
furnished his own horse to get the mails from Hingham. 

It was not until the second postmaster's term that a 
public stage carried the mail and also afforded passenger 
accommodations. The second postmaster was Joel Will- 

*The present Norfolk House. 

tNow burned down, but standing originally at the head of Hull Street on East 
Street. 



S TA GECOA CH, PA CKE T, AND RAIL IV A Y. 437 

cutt, who kept the office for thirty-one years, 1806-37, 
in his little cobbler shop on the north side of Elm Street, 
now the C. F. Bennett estate. 

This postmaster records in his diary, December 30, 
1820: " Came from Boston in the Hingham stage." As 
early as the year 181 5 the Hingham stage from Boston 
had been advertised to leave Dock Square Monday, 
Thursday, and Saturday at four p.m. If this stage 
brought the postmaster through to Cohasset instead of 
leaving him to walk from Hingham, our earliest date of 
a stagecoach was perhaps 1815. Two months later than 
that return trip from Boston, his diary says: "Feb iS* 
1 82 1 Sunday; The mail, due yesterday arrived this day 
at I P.M." 

In 1828, seven years after this, the " Scituate & Boston 
Accommodation Stage " was instituted. It was owned 
by Jedidiah Little & Co., of Scituate, and made three 
trips a week with the Marshfield, Scituate, Cohasset, and 
Hingham mails. The growth of this enterprise may be 
more clearly understood from the following reminiscence 
spoken by Loring Lothrop at the town's centennial cele- 
bration in 1870 : — 

Some of you recollect when old Father Little carried the mail 
and two passengers beside himself in a square- top chaise to Bos- 
ton, and when he came to a decent sort of a ,hill he used to push 
behind and help his jaded animals all he could. One morning 
the town was surprised at the appearance of a stagecoach, drawn 
by two horses, one very large and one very small. It took some 
weeks of observation and reflection to settle in my mind why he 
selected horses so differing in size, one so large and one so small ; 
and the conclusion at last was, that he did it on true philosophical 
principles — in perfect harmony with the operation of the laws 
of the mind. The large horse was an indication of strength and 
power and of high aspirations ; the small one, of weakness and 
humility ; so that, as he looked upon them, Father Little was sure 
to preserve the medium of thought and feeling, and keep on in 



438 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

the even tenor of his way, neither elated by success nor depressed 
by difficulties and doubts. I have no doubt his horses knew just 
how many steps they took from Cohasset to Boston. But who 
shall describe the scene when a coach drawn by four horses left 
the tavern, then kept by our fellow-citizen, Thomas Smith ! 

This line of stagecoaches was continued under different 
owners for about twenty years, until the railway was built. 

One of the famous drivers was " Bill Ferguson," who 
used to be popular with the children, for he sometimes 
would let them climb up on the coach for a short ride. 

One of the outfits is said to have been a red coach with 
four gray horses. The capital stock of the company is 
reported at one time to have been $1,500 at $15 per share, 
a few shares being owned in our town by Samuel Brown, 
Christopher James, and others. 

This mail coach, with its little leather bags of mail and 
its occasional passengers, became a daily event of the 
town, as it bowled along on its way to and from Boston. 

The Hingham steamboat Eagle was put into service 
between that town and Boston as early as 1819-20, so 
that even before Jedidiah Little's stage was operated our 
citizens had a daily transportation line to Boston after a 
walk or a drive to Hingham. 

From 1 82 1 to 1829, however, there seemed to have been 
a break in the steamboat service. Then began the short 
career of the Lafayette, a single-decked side-wheeler, 
whose low-pressure engines kept up a wheezy puffing for 
two hours on each trip between Hingham and Boston, 
The fare was thirty-seven and a half cents, as advertised 
in the Hingham Gazette, May 21, 1830. 

One of our Cohasset boys, George Beal, became captain 
of this craft in 1830, but he soon was promoted to a 
better boat in the same service. It was the General Lin. 
coin,* built for the Boston and Hingham Steamboat Com- 

*For completer accounts of the Hingham boats, see Francis H. Lincoln's article 
on " Public Conveyances" in The History of Hingham. 



S TA GE CO A CII, PA CA'E 7\ AND KAIL J FA Y. 



439 



pany in Philadelphia. She had two boilers and two en- 
gines, burnt wood as her predecessors did, and made the 
trip to Boston in an hour and a half. For thirteen years, 
from June i6, 1832, until the year 1845, the General Lin- 
coln was run, and it was a popular route for Cohasset 
travelers to ride in the stage to Hingham and there to 
board Captain George Real's boat for Boston. 

Of course in the winter, when Hingham Harbor was 
frequently iced over, the General Lincoln was laid off and 
people did but little traveling. The stagecoach for the 
carrying of mail was the only regular winter connection 
with our metropolis. 




The O1.IJ Black Rock HuCsi:, 1S50. 



A branch line of the stagecoach going by way of Jeru- 
salem Road was established about the year 1840, as nearly 
as can be remembered, in charge of the late Warren Bates. 
That stage was the first carriage on Jerusalem Road. 
It was owned by Jones & Sprague, of Duxbury, and made 
connections between the Hingham steamboat landing and 
the through stage at Cohasset. This Jerusalem stage was 
a three-seated wagon drawn at first by one horse, then by 
two, then by three, and finally by four. 

It was about that time when summer visitors were get- 
ting into the habit of coming to Cohasset, and both the 



440 HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 

Black Rock House and the Cold Spring House * were 
growing resorts. The above-mentioned stage driver re- 
members seeing Ex-President John Ouincy Adams stopping 
at the Cold Spring House and fishing off the rocks. 

The roughness of that rocky stage road was terrible. 
The horses would sometimes tumble over the bowlders in 
the road when the evening was a dark one, overturning 
the coach, so that the passengers had to climb out and 
get things righted. 

But the day of stagecoaches came to an end when the 
iron horse rolled puffing in at the year 1849, as we soon 
shall see. The vehicles used in our town for private con- 
veyance were few and clumsy until fifty years ago. 

The only "vehicles" taxed in the whole town of Hing- 
ham in the year 1757 were three chaises and six sedan' 
chairs. That was before we were set off as a town, and 
it is doubtful if even one of these was owned in Cohas- 
set ; for the inventory of our wealthiest man, John Jacob, 
1759, does not include any. 

But chaises were afterwards owned, for these cheaply 
built two-wheeled things with wooden axles could be made 
by our own smiths. 

One of the old wheels shown to the writerf has a hub 
seven inches thick and fourteen inches long. There were 
fourteen spokes held in by seven bits of felly, with the 
rough iron tire in seven pieces holding together the sec- 
tions of the felly. This chaise had a top made of leather 
with a window in the back eighteen inches long, and with 
sides that unbuttoned to let in the driver or passenger. 
Thus was constructed a vehicle somewhat more convenient 
than an ox cart. 

The appearance of the first four-wheeled carriage in our 

*This house no longer exists. It was a cheap building, a sort of club house, 
where people might find a summer shelter and cook their own chowders. It stood 
in front of the present Kendall estate near where the cold spring still flows to 
quench the thirst of travelers. 

t Shown by Robert T. Burbank. 



STA GECOA CH, PA CKET, AND RAIL IVA Y. 44 1 

town was an event long cherished in memory. It was 
made for Major John Pratt, of Beechwood, by Andros 
Wood, the local wheelwright. The box was about sixteen 
inches deep with a seat* resting upon two long strips of 
ash or oak for springs. The body had no springs, but 
rested upon the axles. 

Major Pratt drove down Beechwood Street through the 
central village with his white horse between the shafts of 
his monstrous vehicle, making a stunning impression as 
well as a deafening noise, for it rattled furiously. " It 
was an occasion equal to a Fourth of July," says one who 
saw it when a boy. One of the neighbors who heard the 
thing coming down the street said she "hoped never to 
live to see such another, for the noise was awful." 

But the reign of two-wheeled chaises was doomed at 
that time ; the four-wheeled vehicles had come to stay, and 
so great has been the improvement within our borders 
that Cohasset has few equals in the possession of elegant 
turn-outs. 

Before passing to the account of our railway there is 
one more method of public conveyance to be spoken of, 
namely, the packet. It has been intimated already that 
much of our travel to Boston was done upon the water in 
our fishing boats. P^or many years there were no regular 
trips made for the purpose of carrying freights, but people 
got accommodated as boats might happen to be going. 
The two sloops, Mary, of twenty-nine tons, built in 1797, 
and Sally, of forty-two tons, built the next year, both for 
Samuel Bates, might have been used for a time as packets, 
but not until some time after 1800 was there a steady 
service. 

The Hingham packets were running at this time and as 
early as 1754. Cohasset people who chose to go by the 
Hingham sloop used to walk the four or five miles neces- 

*Theseat is still in existence, owned by Aaron Pratt, the son of Major John 
Pratt. 



442 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

sary to reach her. One of our citizens,* eighty-two years 
of age, says : " My grandmother used to knit sailors' stock- 
ings and mittens to sell in Boston, and she had to walk 
over to Hingham to take the packet there." The packets 
in these early times charged no fare for passengers, for 
their business was with freight only. 

The earliest packet of which we have a certain record 
is the little sloop New Orleans, owned by Levi Tower 
and registered at Boston as a "packet " in the year 1815. 
This may be the same one spoken of in the "War of 
181 2," which was captured and then redeemed. 

The business must have increased as people established 
a trading custom with Boston, for in about ten years there 
were two sloops at work as packets, the Phenix and the 
Glance. The Phenix was run by Captain Albert Beal, the 
Glance by Captain Levi Nichols, and they made two or 
three trips each week in the summer. They carried to 
Boston many barrels of fish after the packing, and they 
brought from Boston merchandise for the stores and for 
building purposes in the town. The farmers' small prod- 
uce, like butter and eggs, could be easily carried to a good 
market in this way, but passengers could not be very easily 
accommodated. In the first place, one could never know 
precisely when a packet would sail, nor could there be any 
guarantee as to the time of reaching the metropolis or of 
returning. Only a few traveled by this route, therefore, 
although the fare charged was nothing. The passenger 
usually worked his way by helping the skipper and his one 
" hand " to get under way or to manage the packet. A 
little fireplace in the cabin made a cheery hearthstone for 
the cold days of spring and fall, and the three or four 
hours of the passage were whiled away by gossip and sea- 
men's yarns. 

After the days of the Glance and Phenix, the Belle, a 
little schooner, was run by Alexander T. Prouty. An 

* William V. Creed. 



STAGECOACH, PACKET, AND RAILWAY. 



44: 



interesting anecdote of the Belle is told, occurring about 
forty years ago. She had a pleasure party of a score or 
more upon a warm summer day ; and after catching a few 
codfish, she returned to anchor just outside of the harbor, 
while they might cook the chowder. In the afternoon 
a tempest suddenly arose and the company was driven 
into the cabin. Suddenly a bolt of lightning struck the 
packet. The blow shattered the mainmast, and Charles 
A. Cousens, who was standing below with his hand rest- 
ing against it, was stunned. The consternation in that 




Head of the Cove, iSiyS. 

crowded cabin may be imagined. Chowder and lightning 
did not make an agreeable mixture. 

Another packet was the sloop Hattie J. Averill, run by 
Captain Henry Collier, carrying freights of every sort, 
farm produce, lumber, sand, anything wherever trade might 
call him in Massachusetts Bay. 

The Lycena, which followed the days of the schooner 
Belle, was skippered by William V. Creed, and the suc- 
cess of the little craft may be guessed when it is known 
that this packet took mortgages off from three or four 
houses by her earnings. 



444 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

For many years after the railroad was laid to Cohasset 
these packets continued to do freighting for the citizens 
of the town. Many are the families that used to lay in 
their supplies of groceries brought down in the fall of the 
year from Boston in these packets. 

It was a day of great delight to some children when 
their household laid in the winter's stock of food. Per- 
haps a quarter of beef had been bought and would be cut 
up, some of it for salting, some for freezing, and some 
for immediate use. The frugal habits of these hard-work- 
ing people made it easy to resist extravagance even in the 
face of abundance ; and this was the most economical 
way of buying their provisions. However, these domestic 
scenes have almost ceased since the passing of the 
packets. 

One cruise of packeting is still to be mentioned which 
went many thousands of miles farther than Boston. It 
was the little brig Pianette, which loaded up with Cohasset 
men and supplies during the California gold excitement in 
1849. Captain Henry Pratt with nineteen others* regis- 
tered in Boston, March 30, 1849, ^-i^d sailed south around 
Cape Horn and up again through the Pacific Ocean for San 
Francisco, where she arrived after the long voyage of five 
months. That group of Cohasset men made our quota 
of the famous California " Forty-Niners." Some of them 
returned the next year and others remained to gain some 
of the yellow dust which was able to magnetize men from 
every part of the globe. 

♦Zealous Bates. Aquila Kilburn. 

Israel C. Vinal. George W. Stoddard. 

Charles P. Bourne. Lot Stoddard. 

Otis V. Barnes. Henry Bates. 

Isaac Pratt. Artemas Thorndyke. 

George Bradford. Charles A. Cousens. 

James Bates. Clark Cutting. 

George Smith. Elijah Marble. 

Joseph Briggs, Jr. Manuel King. 
Frederick Bates. 



STAGECOACH, PACKET, AND RAILWAY. 



445 



Of other packeting to distant shores we have already 
spoken. The following list of freighting vessels owned 
at Cohasset and registered in Boston during this period is 
probably far from complete, but they were gleaned by 
much labor from the Boston Custom House records and 
may be of interest. The journeys of these vessels may 
be imagined to every country of the globe. The two 
brigs of Levi Tower, the Rebecca and the Ann, went 
many times into the Mediterranean Sea to get fruit 
cargoes. 



Regis- 
tered. 


Name. Tonnage. 


Managing Owner. 


Master. 


1837 


Eolus (schr.) 


• "7 


James C. Doane. 


John Wilson. 


,, 


Tower (schr.) . 


. 121 


Nichols Tower. 


John Barker. 


,, 


Talisman (brig) 


. 146 A. H. Tower, 


Henry Pratt, 2d. 


1840 


Eolus (brig) . . 


. 117 James C. Doane. 


John Carpenter. 


„ 


Eunice (schr.) . 


. 50 .A. H. Tower. 


John Williams. 


184I 


Caroline (schr.) 


. 70 


John Bates. 


John Wilson. 


1842 


Lewis (bark) 


. 218 


Nichols Tower. 


John Barker. 


1843 


Speedwell (brig) 


. 105 


A. H. Tower & Co. 


Septimus Thorndyke. 


,, 


Casket (brig) . 


• 155 Josiah 0. Lawrence. 


David Wilson. 


1844 


Anne & Julia (brig] 


. 131 A. H. Tower. 


Henry Pratt. 


184s 


.•\lmatia (brig) . 


• 99 


Laban Souther. 


Joseph Smith. 


1846 


Hurculean (schr.) 


. Ill 






1849 


Pianet (brig) 


. 120 


Henry Pratt & Co. 


Henry Pratt. 


1852 


Vesta (bark) 


. 196 


John Bates. 




„ 


George Otis (brig) 


• 174 


Joseph H. Smith. 




,, 


Profit (schr.) 


■ 74 


C. Collier. 


Christopher Collier. 


„ 


Nerissa (schr.) . 


• 97 


Nichols Tower. 




,, 


Oriola (schr.) . 


. 83 


C. Lothrop. 




1853 


Kepler (bark) . 


. 418 


John Bates. 




185s 


Martha Allen (barl 


<) . 284 




J. H. Smith. 


,, 


Daylight (ship) 


■548 


John Bates. 


D. Wilson. 


i860 


Wenonah (schr.) 


. 96 A. H. Tower. 




1862 


Forest Oak (schr.) 


. 112 


A. H. Tower. 




1863 


H. N. Ruggles (scV 


ir.) 132 




Henry Snow. 


1866 


Fraricis L. Steele (s 


chr.) 80 


John Bates. 





But packeting and sea freighting as well as stagecoach- 
ing began to dwindle as the indirect result of a steam 
railway connecting us with Boston. In fact, a series of 



446 HIS TOR Y OF CO HA SSE T. 

the greatest changes ever brought about in our town has 
followed the introduction of the railroad. 

About fifty-three years ago, in 1845, some of our more 
energetic townsmen began to urge the feasibility of a rail 
connection with the metropolis. The Boston and Provi- 
dence line had been running for ten years, since June, 
1835, and now in November, 1845, a still nearer line was 
opened between Boston and Plymouth running through 
Abington, some miles to the west of our town. 

The nearest point on the line was Braintree, twelve 
miles away. The villages of Hingham and the northern 
part of Weymouth needed a railroad as much as we did ; 
so that business men all along the south shore advocated 
the construction of a branch line that might connect with 
the Old Colony Railroad at Braintree. A stock company 
was soon formed, and hundreds of public-spirited persons 
along the proposed line subscribed for shares at fifty dol- 
lars each. 

Thus the "South Shore Railroad" was incorporated 
March 26, 1846. Their capital stock was limited to 
;^6oo,ooo, and their proposal was to build a road from 
Duxbury through Marshfield, Scituate, and Cohasset and 
so on to Braintree, where they would be permitted to use 
the tracks of the Old Colony the rest of the way to 
Boston. 

There was no little wire-pulling done by the several 
communities concerned, to get the road located for their 
own best and sometimes exclusive convenience. Several 
miles of travel might be saved for the town of Hingham 
and points below if the way were laid through Old Spain 
and Quincy Point. Hingham business men worked to 
secure this route; but they tried, furthermore, to make 
their own town the terminus, shutting off Cohasset from 
the enterprise. 

If the Hingham projectors had been willing to make 
Cohasset the terminus, the road would probably have been 



S TA GECOA CH, PA CKE T, AND RAIL WA Y. 44 7 

located upon that short route, leaving. East Weymouth 
and Weymouth Landing far to the west. But rather than 
to be cut off, Cohasset joined forces with the Weymouths 
to bend the road westward through their towns at a much 
increased expense, on condition that Cohasset be the ter- 
minus. The longer way was adopted, and the charter was 
changed April 20, 1847, cutting off the towns of Duxbury, 
Marshfield, and Scituate, making the terminus at Cohasset. 

Two years from April, 1847, were allowed for the com- 
pletion of this steam highway. The way through Wey- 
mouth was excessively rough for a New England railroad, 
but by dint of much blasting in granite and shale ledges, 
and much grading away of gravel hills and many bridges 
across inlets of tide water, the roadbed was finally com- 
pleted in the latter part of 1848. The cost was much 
more than the stockholders had anticipated, and the four 
assessments* during 1847 made them feel the cost of the 
institution to which they had subscribed. But the score or 
more of Cohasset citizens who had embarked in this enter- 
prise were willing to be put to a considerable expense for 
the public good. A large amount of stock was taken also 
by contractors as part payment for work done. 

There was a sort of business bargain called a consolida- 
tion, between the Old Colony Company and the South 
Shore Company, formed while our road was being built, 
September 20, 1847. The South Shore was to construct 
and to maintain the road for five years, and the Old Col- 
ony was to furnish all of the rolling stock and manage the 
trai^c. The rent to be paid by the Old Colony was six 
per cent on the cost of the road from the time of its com- 
pletion ; but as the cost was running beyond the estimates, 
the Old Colony stipulated that they would pay rent upon 
no more than ;^400,ooo. It was a good bargain for the 

* From Lieut. Thomas Stoddard's diary : — 

July 6, 1847. " I paid my first assessment on two shares of South Shore R. R. 
stock to J. C. Doane Esq." Three other assessments followed during six months. 



448 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



Old Colony, but the stockholders of the South Shore were 
not so anxious to make money as to have the road. 

An entry in Lieut. Thomas Stoddard's diary, October, 
1848, says: "The South Shore Railway progresses rap- 
idly ; the grading completed and commenced laying the 
rails. The stock all paid in and the Cohasset depot is 
building." 

The depot was the old wooden station shown in the 
accompanying cut. One side of the station was built 
over the track, making a large room in the second story 
directly above the train. It was in this room that the 




The First Cohasset Station. Built iE 



celebration occurred on January i, 1849, when the road 
was opened for travel. 

The following story of this event is taken from the 
Boston Daily CJironotype, January 2, 1849, written in a 
sprightly style by an eyewitness : — 

After infinite palaver, as Carlyle would say, the South Shore 
Road has got itself located and opened. Is not this a proof of 
the feasibility of republics? The people in the one hundred and 
one coves and inlets of our many-sided Boston Harbor are some- 
what like frogs — the grant of a railroad for them caused any 
amount of clack. Should it be here or there? One would have 



STAGECOACH, PACKET, AND RAILWAY. 449 

said, with such pulling and hauling, it would be nowhere. We 
can testify it is there ! 

Yesterday was one of the brightest possible winter days, and at 
12 o'clock an immense, long train waited half an hour for the 
City Government, and then started, rolled on over the Calf 
Pasture by Dorchester, Neponset, Quincy, and Braintree, and 
gracefully curved ofif upon the new road, which the glorious 
amphibious people of North Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, and 
Cohasset have built for themselves. 

It passes through a populous and thriving country, where chil- 
dren are abundant, living off the produce of both land and sea. 
They seem to have curved the road a good deal to suit as many 
as possible. 

Passing through the ancient hive of Hingham, the folks made 
us promise to come back and take supper. 

Arrived at Cohasset about half-past two. Cohasset is of itself 
no small place. It has considerable ground to stand upon, be- 
sides the water beyond it. We saw two churches, many snug 
houses, multitudes of people. Probably some, by permission of 
their mothers, came from Hull. 

At Cohasset is a spacious car house, some two or three hun- 
dred feet long, the whole of which was converted into a sort of 
summer bower, with evergreens for foliage and red and white 
bunting for blossoms. Two long tables were bountifully spread, 
and the crowd passed in without let or hindrance. 

We should guess there were at least one thousand, perhaps 
more. After an air from the fine Weymouth Brass Band and the 
invocation of a blessing,* the eatables were attended to. 

We must not forget to mention that besides a most bountiful 
and various cold collation, with hot coffee, there was a hogshead 
or two of chowder, piping hot, ladled out. 

As Daniel Webster was not on hand for the responsible service 
of superintending the chowder pot, our friend John Wright, of 
Exchange Street, had performed that duty. This does not argue 
that Cohasset people do not themselves make chowder. They 
look as if they did. 

The president of the road, Mr. Alfred C. Hersey, opened the 

* By Rev. Joseph Osgood. 



450 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



speech making very handsomely in a brief address, and Mr. 
Johnson read the first toast to the Old Colony Road, which called 
forth Mr. Derby, its president. He complimented very justly 
the ladies of Cohasset for the fine appearance of the hall and the 
bountiful supply of the tables, and ended with a toast for Boston, 
which was responded to by three cheers for Ex-Mayor Quincy. 

A toast to the good old Commonwealth of Massachusetts was 
i-esponded to by Mr. Amasa Walker, who is truly as much the 
embodiment of Massachusetts spirit as any man. He gave in a 
few words a striking view of what Massachusetts has done for 
railroads, and what they have done for her. 

Mr. Degrand, of Boston, in his inimitable manner demonstrated 
that the South Shore Railroad had cost $100,000 less than noth- 
ing. It had raised the value of land for a mile on each side of 
it on an average of $50.00 an acre. Sic vos, 7ion vobis, the 
stockholders might say ; but Mr. Degrand did not mind that. 
He went on to advocate a road to San Francisco, and to prove in 
the same way that it would cost less than nothing. 

When the City Government was toasted, our friends Kimball 
and Woodman did the honors, with an unction which showed 
how well they deserve their seats in that honorable body. Moses 
related how a certain roaring " Bull of Bashan " opposed the 
mortgaging of the State for the Worcester railroad, and how 
another common but dangerous bull of Worcester County op- 
posed, to his cost, the progress of the first locomotive which 
traversed that county. And then he drew a parallel, which 
brought down the house, between the one bull and the other; at 
last letting the ignorant know that the Bull of Bashan was B. F. 
Hallett. 

The Press being toasted, unfortunately the only thing in the 
shape of an editor was the Ishmaelite of the Chronotype, who, 
alluding to the remarkable fact that though Hull belonged exclu- 
sively to the Courier, he had some interest in Cohasset, having 
partly educated one of its Parsons, and gave for a toast: "The 
People of Cohasset : from the liberty with which they have used 
their ladles to-day, they deserve to dwell on the brim of the great 
chowder pot of the world." 

Time would fail us even to name all the good things that were 
said and toasted. At the hour of four the immense throng piled 



STA GECOA CH, PA CKE T, AND HAIL JVA V. 45 I 

themselves into the cars, and returned to Hingham, where, in one 
of the most beautiful station buildings in the country, they were 
invited to another " light repast." It was light in regard to the 
illumination, but quite substantial as to the amount of sponge 
cake and coffee — nothing stronger. Indeed the whole jollifica- 
tion was on temperance principles, and the very wittiest men used 
nothing but cold water. 

At seven o'clock the whole party, having enjoyed the best pos- 
sible time of it, — a brand new edition of toasts, jokes, and com- 
pliments being got out at Hingham, — returned to Boston by eight. 

It was a capital sentiment offered by David Kimball, brother of 
the Museum man : " T/ie improvement of traveling and colla- 
tions, the former with steam and the latter without." 

Such grand railroad doings without liquor speak well for 
Massachusetts, God bless her ! 

The trains were run but twice each day inward and 
twice outward, making the distance of twelve miles from 
Cohasset to Braintree in about half an hour. The 
engine rested at Braintree to bring back the cars on 
their return from Boston. Such a locomotive, weighing 
less than half our present ones, and burning cord wood to 
make steam, would be amusing to-day ; and the two pas- 
senger cars were the kind now contemptuously known as 
" cattle cars." Baggage was carried in a combination car — ■ 
one half for smokers. In the summer time we had as many 
as three trips of our train each way daily except Sundays, 
leaving Cohasset at 6.35 and 9.55 a.m. and at 5.20 p.m.* The 
same cars came back again, leaving Boston at 8. 10 a.m. 
and at 2.45 and 6.40 p.m. The departure of our trains was 
announced by a bell in one of the towers of the station, 
ringing at fifteen minutes before the engine started and 
again at five minutes before. The people of Scituate and 
Marshfield were accommodated by the stages which made 
connection with the trains at Cohasset. From the begin- 
ning there were some Scituate men eager for a railroad, and 

* Taken from time table, Boston, April 25, 1856. 



452 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

on April 23, 1847, the Cohasset and Scituate Branch Rail- 
road was incorporated to extend the road to Scituate 
Harbor; but this scheme was abortive, and the old- 
fashioned stage had to be used for twenty-two years after 
the Cohasset road was opened. 

Then, in 1871, the Duxbury and Cohasset Railroad 
Company got the way opened and operated as far as Dux- 
bury. Three years later, 1874, this road extended to 
Kingston, where it rejoined the Old Colony line to Plym- 
outh, thus making two separate routes between Braintree 
and Plymouth. 

The absorption of these smaller companies by the 
larger ones at a price far below the cost of construction 
was a phenomenon of the railroad business now grown 
familiar. It has been repeated in countless communities, 
but the losses sustained by the first stockholders have 
been made up many times by the increase in local values 
and in convenience of travel. The Old Colony Company 
in its turn has been swallowed by the much larger system 
called the New York, New Haven and Hartford. The lease 
to that great concern occurred in February, 1893, and 
when the two companies consolidated it took ten shares of 
the Old Colony stock to equal nine of the New York, New 
Haven and Hartford. 

The first wooden station was burned on Thanksgiving 
night, 1857, and with it many of the railroad papers of 
Laban Souther, the division superintendent, which might 
have told interesting details of the road's early days. A 
second wooden station, or "car house " as they called both 
the early ones, was built upon the site of the old one. It 
was a long shed spreading across the two tracks, affording 
some room for offices in the second story. There was no 
little business carried on in the offices, for in those days 
much of the construction was carried on at Cohasset. The 
cars were made and repaired here, and the engines also 
were frequently patched up in our "round house," making 
employment for machinists. 



STAGECOACH, PACKET, AND RAILWAY. 



453 



The time came in a few years when the second wooden 
station was torn down and the present artistic little station 
was built. So expensive an improvement would not have 
been placed here so early had it not been for the influence 
of Uriel Crocker, one of our summer residents, and for 
thirty years a director of the Old Colony Railroad. Loving 
the town for its natural beauty, Mr. Crocker lent his per- 




Pboto, Edward Xichols. 

The Onset of a Wave, Pleasant Beach. 

sonal efforts to secure one more touch of artificial adorn- 
ment. It is perhaps worthy of comment that our rugged 
shore with its rocky ledges was shunned in the early days 
when hard Puritan utility was demanded, but that now the 
very qualities which were despised are our chief source of 
attraction. It was natural at first, when Cohasset was the 
terminus of the South Shore Railroad, for many of the em- 
ployees to be residents of this town. As the business has 
increased the number of Cohasset employees has grown. 
Even since the extension of the line to Duxbury in 1871 the 
large percentage of employees have been Cohasset men, 



454 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

because many of the trains make this station their ter- 
minus. It would be difficult to estimate the effect upon this 
community of this line of steam transportation to Boston. 
Besides the fifty or more families of railroad employees, 
there are more than a hundred families which gain their 
living in our neighboring metropolis by means of this rail 
connection. Moreover, during the summer months hun- 
dreds of visitors to our picturesque seashore are enabled 
to make a suburb of this town and thus deeply to change 
the character of the place. From the sheep raising and 
agriculture and fishing with their allied industries this 
community has gradually turned away ; we have become 
about half suburban, and the factor which has brought 
about this change more than any other cause is the South 
Shore Railroad. 

The transformation is being still more rapidly carried 
on while the pen is writing these words, for the new 
factor of electricity has been introduced. The third rail 
has already been laid a part of the way between here and 
Boston for the electric current, which will sweep along the 
passenger cars with still greater comfort and frequency. 

It was only a few years ago that some conservative 
people deprecated putting on six trains a day, because 
they thought such rapid changing of the engines and 
trains at our station would breed accidents. Now (sum- 
mer, 1898) we have seventeen trains, with the expectation 
of still more as soon as the line of electrics is inaugurated. 

When to these improvements we add the commodious 
Union Station now being raised in Boston, the facilities for 
transportation must impress any observer with the pro- 
found change in the life of our community; and it must 
be apparent that the occupations and habits and even the 
character of our citizens have been deeply involved in 
the evolution of our " Stagecoach, Packet, and Railway." 



CHAPTER XXII. 

WRECKS, WRECKING, AND MINOT LIGHT. 

THE privilege of an open sea has been accompanied 
by many disasters for Cohasset inhabitants. The 
drownings and the wrecks which have occurred upon our 
shore have been an unbroken series from the earliest 
settlement to the latest summer bathing. The number 
and the names of many unfortunates will never be known. 
The deeds of daring which have been recorded in the 
books of the Massachusetts Humane Society to the credit 
of Cohasset life savers cannot all be read, for these records 
were burnt in the great Boston fire of 1872. Many of 
their medals, however, are owned in our town as evidence 
of bravery in a score of disasters. 

The great wreck of the Gertrude Maria in 1793 off 
Brush Island has been told in a previous chapter. In 
this we have to recall some of the subsequent tragedies 
which have not lost themselves from our available records. 
The diary of Joel Willcutt, already referred to, gives a 
number which attracted his attention during the years 
immediately following the Gertrude Maria. 

The first was December 7, 1796. The diary says: 
" Last night there was a vessel from Chatham cast away 
at the Glades. One man, one woman, and a boy were 
drowned. 

" Another vessel got into Briggs' Harbor and one got 
ashore on Long Beach." 

Saturday, December 10: "This day the people that 
were drowned were buried from our meeting-house." 

Three years later, December 17, 1799, the diary says: 
"This day there were two ships cast away, one down by 
Captain Nathaniel Nichols' (Black Rock) stove to pieces; 
the other one got into the harbor by White Head." 

455 



4^6 insroRY of con asset. 

The next year, April lo, 1800: "This day a sloop and 
a schooner got on shore at the Glades." 

The next year, October 24, 1801, the following minute, 
not wholly clear, is made : " Mr. Samuel Bates' schooner 
got on the rocks off Brush Island and all lost. Mr. Bates, 
Mr. John Kent, Captain Dan'l Loring of Hull and one 
young man — Captain Loring came ashore in the boat on 
the Glades." The uncertainty seems to be whether 
Captain Loring came ashore dead or alive. The tragic list 
continues, October 9, 1803 : "A very remarkable gale of 
wind. Two vessels cast away on the beach by Mr. Aaron 
Nichols'. One man drowned." 

The monotony of these wrecks may be relieved by a 
drowning incident which occurred March 3, 1808, in the 
Gulf above where the bridge now is. 

Two boys, sons of the two Captains Snow, were play- 
ing upon the thin ice near the open channel about eighty 
feet from the bank and broke through. Their mothers 
seeing them in the water both ran to rescue them, followed 
by a little daughter. The ice held until one mother 
reached a place ten feet away from the boys, when she 
broke through. Her little girl of eleven years also fell 
in a few feet away. The remaining woman turned and 
ran screaming for help, while the mother and daughter 
and the two boys were hanging to the edge of the thin 
ice in the cold water. 

There was no man nearer than a half mile away. Cap- 
tains Luther Stephenson and Nichols Tower, Col. New- 
comb Bates, and Thaddeus Lawrence, and perhaps 
others were standing upon one of our wharves when the 
cry came from up in the Gulf. They all ran towards the 
scene of drowning children and woman. Luther Stephen- 
son saw two children and the woman with their heads 
above the water holding on to the ice, but one of the 
children had gone down. Another child was just sinking, 
and Captain Stephenson, tearing off a fence rail, rushed 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



457 



to the edge of the creek, which lay between him and the 
sinking child, hoping to reach the child across the un- 
frozen middle of the creek. But the thin ice broke, let- 
ting the man into the water only ten feet away from the 
child. He swam across and caught the child, holding it 
above water as best he could, waiting for some one else to 
help them both. 

The other men passed around the head of the treacher- 
ous creek and got a small boat, which they pushed off into 
the water. First they pulled into the boat the exhausted 
woman and one child, then they reached a long pole to 
Stephenson with the other child, and by a hard struggle 




Photo, Mrs. v.. v.. Kllms. 

Ice Boatint, on the Gulf. 



pulled them through the cakes of broken ice to the boat. 
The little craft was leaking dangerously ; and when 
Stephenson with his protege were taken in, they had 
hardly time to breathe before the boat swamped and the 
whole crowd were dumped into the water again. 

The children were too exhausted to try again for their 
lives and they sank to the bottom. The tangle of strug- 
gling men and the half-drowned woman was an awful 
sight to the few that watched them from the meadow 
bank seventy feet away. Some rushed up to one of the 
houses to get a rope, none of which could be found, 



458 HIS TOR Y OF CO HA SSE 7 '. 

except what was woven across the old-fashioned bed 
frames to hold the mattresses. A piece of this was cut 
and pulled out by nervous fingers through the meshes 
and the holes into which it had been woven, while the 
men were struggling to save themselves in the chilly- 
water. 

Several of the men had raised themselves out of the 
water upon the edge of the ice and crept their way drip- 
ping to the shore. Stephenson and another man and the 
poor woman (Mrs. Ephraim Snow) were still in the water. 
One end of a bed cord was thrown out across the broken 
ice, and Stephenson, quitting the sunken boat to which he 
had been holding, swam for the line. He saw the hair of 
Mrs. Snow's head upon the water, and seizing her, the 
both of them were dragged to the edge of the firm ice. 
Here a ladder was reached to them and the man held to 
the ladder and to the woman until they were both pulled 
upon the ice by some one who could reach them. Mrs, 
Snow, limp and apparently lifeless, was taken to the 
house, where she was chafed for hours until her life was 
persuaded to return. 

All were saved but the three children, Drusilla and 
Joshua, the children of Ephraim Snow, and little Henry 
of four years, the son of Captain Henry Snow. These 
three were taken from the bottom within a half hour 
from the time they sank, but life had gone completely. 

Luther Stephenson was awarded a gold medal for his 
heroic efforts by the Massachusetts Humane Society. 
Silver ones were given to Newcomb Bates, Nichols 
Tower, Thaddeus Lawrence, and the writer thinks to 
others not known at present. It was a group of disasters 
so distressing that a whole century has not effaced the 
impression of' it. The Gulf has seen more than these 
tragedies, for at least three * persons have been drowned 
in it by falling from the old tottering plank which crossed 

*One was Mary Delano, aged five years, August, 1815. 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



459 



the mouth of it many years until the wooden bridge * 
was built in 1822. 

To return to the diary of Joel Willcutt we find, Sep- 
tember I, 181 5 : "Last night there was a vessel sunk off 
Cohasset Rocks and five men drowned. Two were taken 
off the rock alive after remaining on her spars eleven 
hours." 

Again, December 6, 18 18, Sunday: "A gale of wind 
S. E. ; this morning there was a barque from Russia 
named Sarah & Susan loaded with hemp and iron, on 
Minot Ledge. At eight o'clock the upper part of the 
ship parted from the bottom and drifted to leeward with 
the crew hanging thereon. At one o'clock nine were 
taken off, four others having been drowned." 

This ledge f needed to be branded as dangerous, but 
our government was slow to erect a lighthouse upon it 
because the rock was always covered at high tide, allow- 
ing no time for a foundation to be built. Meanwhile the 
luckless vessels were annually impaled upon this sharp 
ledge or its similar neighbors. 

The business of "wrecking," that is, of saving the 
pieces, came to be the trade of a number of Cohasset 
citizens. The annual castaways strewn along our shore 
from Scituate Harbor to Point Allerton gave employment 
to many of our amphibious laborers, securing the cargoes 
from total destruction or saving the bits of the wreck. 

The underwriters of Boston naturally kept some Co- 
hasseter appointed as their agent to report losses and to 
save as much property as possible. One of the best 
remembered underwriters' agents was Captain Nichols 
Tower, who employed a number of Cohasset men in sav- 
ing the cargoes of cotton upon two New Orleans vessels 
grounded near the town, and the cargo of East India 
merchandise upon the Massasoit. 

* The present iron bridge took its place in 1896. 

fThe name Minot probably was given to it in memory of some man who ran a 
vessel upon it. The name has been in Cohasset families for many years. 



460 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

Many other important wrecking jobs were undertaken 
in company with Captain Daniel T. Lothrop, an experi- 
enced seaman of whom more will be spoken in a few 
minutes ; but the most interesting salvage enterprise was 
undertaken upon the coast of South America. It was the 
wreck of the Spanish war frigate San Pedro de Alcantra, 
which had been sunk in the Bay of Cumana on the coast 
of Venezuela in the year 181 5. She had on board a good 
many thousand dollars in silver coins, but being covered 
by fifty feet of ocean waves, the treasure had lain un- 
touched by the eager hand of man. 

Finally, 1850-51,* Captain Tower fitted out a crew of 
Cohasset divers and seamen, including Captain Jenkins, 
George Nickerson, Lorenzo Bates, John J. Lincoln, James 
Tower, Thomas Bates, and others, and sailed in the 
schooner Eliza Ann for the sunken frigate. The Spanish 
government supposed the enterprise a bit of folly, and 
agreed to give the wreckers what they might rescue from 
the deep, only requiring two and a half per cent of what 
was recovered. 

The result of the first year's work was fourteen thou- 
sand dollars. The second summer season was yielding 
well and had reached seven thousand dollars, when some 
Spaniards became so menacing that our men were in con- 
stant jeopardy of their lives. They escaped, however, 
with the seven thousand dollars for their second season's 
work. 

The method of diving was not with a suit of rubber 
and a helmet supplied by air pumps from above, but with 
a clumsy "diving bell," which had to be drawn up fre- 
quently lest the men should suffocate under the water. 

Twenty years later another expedition was fitted out for 
the same task, and Michael Brennock, of Cohasset, went 
as professional diver. A modern diving suit was used in 
this second enterprise and some seven thousand more 

* Another authority gives the date 1856. 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



461 



Spanish dollars were recovered, two of which are in the 
Brennock family. 

Besides Captain Tower and Captain Lothrop, another 
underwriters' agent was Captain Loring Bates, of whose 
work during the Civil War something will be said in its 
appropriate place. Furthermore, there were of course 
private wrecking companies, who learned the art of rescu- 
ing valuables from the sea here among our own rocks, and 
who went elsewhere upon native or foreign coasts for the 
same work.* 

But prevention is better than cure, and a lighthouse is 
of more use than wrecking companies. The dangerous 
reefs spreading in both directions from Minot Ledge 
were long regarded as in great need of a warning light- 
house ; but the trouble was to get a broad enough founda- 
tion upon any one of these sharp ledges. Finally, Captain 
W. H. Swift, of the United States Engineering Corps, 
proposed to the government at Washington the building 
of an iron lighthouse upon stilts over Minot Ledge, like 
the beacon he had placed at the entrance of Black Rock 
Harbor, Connecticut. In order to persuade the govern- 
ment to undertake this expensive job, he got Captain 
Daniel T. Lothrop, of Cohasset, to make out a list of 
losses for the preceding thirty years in the neighborhood 
of the ledge. 



THE LIST SUBMITTED BY CAPTAIN LOTHROP, APRIL 15. 1847, IS 

AS FOLLOWS, BEGINNING WHERE WE LEFT OFF, 

JOEL WILLCUTT'S DIARY. 

TOTAL LOSSES. 

Brig Banner $20,000 



Ship Moses Meyers . . . 


. ^40,000 


Bark Sarah & Susan . . . 


60,000 


Brig Federal George . . . 


15,000 


Schr. Armistice 


10,000 


„ Pelican 


3,000 


„ Laurel 


2,000 


Brig Juno 


20,000 


Spanish I;etch (with wine) . 


10,000 



,, Champion 

,, Boston . . 

,, Warsaw , 

Schr. Cardenas . 

Aurora . . 

Ship N. O. Packet 

Schr. Mechanic 



5, 000 
S,ooo 
4,000 
3,000 
5,000 
30,000 
3,000 



* A model showing the arrangement of chains under a sunken hull, patented by 
Captain Joseph Smith, is in our town library. 



462 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

TOTAL \.0%^^?,— continued. 

Schr. Chance $3,000 gchr. William Harris . . . $5,000 

Brig (molasses cargo) . . . 14,000 grig Russia 25,000 

Orion (coffee) 10,000 __ Melazo 20,000 



Ship Roxanna 30,000 

Sloop (oysters) 



Total $343,000 



PARTIAL LOSSES. 

Brig Triton $2,000 2 brigs (timber) $2,000 

Schr. Margaret 1,000 Brig (Portuguese) 1,000 

Sloop Globe 500 Revenue cutter 

Schr. Morning Star .... 500 Schr. (corn) 1,000 

Brig America 1,000 Brig Bordeaux 2,000 

Schr. Norward Douglas. . . 1,000 Bark Oberlin 3,000 

„ Exchange 1,000 Ship Dublin 4,000 

Ship 1,000 „ , , ~Z ■ 

^ Total $21,000 

Captain Lothrop had been an underwriters' agent for 
several years and his estimates were conservative ones, 
by a man in the best position to judge. In addition to 
this ^364,000 worth of property, he estimated about forty 
lives to have been lost during those years. 

It was plain that a lighthouse would have prevented 
some of these disasters, and the government authorized Cap- 
tain W. H. Swift to commence his unique structure of iron. 
It was ascertained that the lowest tide would not expose 
more than a space twenty-five feet wide upon which to 
work, but in the spring of 1847 the drilling began. Nine 
holes had to be cut into the rock five feet deep and about 
ten inches in diameter. One was in the center and the 
other eight were around it, forming an octagon about 
twenty-four feet in diameter. 

Working to suit the moods of the sea, it took nearly 
two seasons to get these nine holes drilled into the granite 
rock. Into them at last were fitted the heavy iron piles, 
wedged with strips of iron and packed securely with iron 
filings. The outer piles were tapered to four and a half 
inches in diameter at the top, and the center one to six 
inches. The outer ones leaned towards the center, so that 
the top of the frame, not quite forty feet above the rock, 
was about eighteen feet across. 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 463 

There it stood like a huge spider with its eight legs 
and an extra iron spike in the middle. Upon the top of 
this frame a lighter iron frame was built up to a point 
sixty feet above the ledge, where the lantern room was 
placed. Every leg and corner was braced by diagonal 
rods to resist any force of wind or waves to sVvay the 
frame. The little room for the keeper and his supplies 
was built beneath the lantern room, and all seemed to be 
snug and firm. It was finished in the fall of 1849, ^'^d 
Isaac A. Dunham took charge of it, lighting the lamp for 
the first time on December 13, 1849. 

The structure had not been completed before another 
terrible wreck occurred a few hundred yards away. It 
was the greatest disaster, measured by loss of life, that is 
set to the discredit of our shore. 

On Sunday morning at seven o'clock, October 7, 1849, 
under a heavy northeast storm, the British brig St. John, 
loaded with immigrants brought from Galway, Ireland, 
was driven upon Grampus Ledge near Minot, and ninety- 
nine lives were lost. Another brig, the Kathleen, had 
managed to creep into the mouth of our harbor and to 
anchor ; but the St. John was farther out where the gale 
struck furiously and made her drag anchors. 

The masts were cut away, but still she dragged on. 
After the first heavy thump on the Grampus Rock the old 
hulk rapidly tumbled to bits. Previous to the breaking 
up, the jolly-boat was hanging by the tackles alongside 
when the stern ringbolt broke and she fell into the waves. 
Captain Oliver, the second mate, and two boys jumped 
into her to clear her, when about twenty-five passengers 
poured into her and swamped her so that all perished but 
the captain. The first mate hauled in the captain, who 
caught the end of a rope. 

Then the longboat was loosed and the captain with the 
first mate and eight of the crew and two passengers 
scrambled into her, reaching shore at the Glades. Many 



464 ' HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

more passengers were drowned in their desperate endeav- 
ors to get into the longboat which saved the captain and 
crew. Ten others, upon a piece of the deck which was 
wrenched off by the waves, were floated safely to shore, 
seven men and three women. 

The St. John was only an hour in tumbling to pieces 
under the incessant banging of the waves upon her. 
Ninety-nine lives were lost and twenty-two were saved. 
One of the survivors was a young woman who afterwards 
settled in Cohasset, marrying a man whose name was by 
strange coincidence St. John. 

The account of this wreck, told by the famous Hermit 
of Walden, Henry D. Thoreau, who was an eyewitness, is 
as follows : — * 

We left Concord, Massachusetts, on Tuesday, October 9, 1849. 
On reaching Boston, we found that the Provincetown steamer, 
which should have got in the day before, had not yet arrived, 
on account of a violent storm ; and, as we noticed in the 
streets a handbill headed, " Death ! one hundred and forty-five 
lives lost at Cohasset," we decided to go by way of Cohasset. 
We found many Irish in the cars, going to identify bodies and to 
sympathize with the survivors, and also to attend the funeral which 
was to take place in the afternoon ; and when we arrived at 
Cohasset, it appeared that nearly all the passengers were bound 
for the beach, which was about a mile distant, and many other 
persons were flocking in from the neighboring country. There 
were several hundreds of them streaming off over Cohasset com- 
mon in that direction, some on foot and some in wagons, and 
among them were some sportsmen in their hunting-jackets, with 
their guns, and game bags, and dogs. As we passed the grave- 
yard we saw a large hole, like a cellar, freshly dug there, and, just 
before reaching the shore, by a pleasantly winding and rocky 
road, we met several hay-riggings and farm wagons coming away 
toward the meeUng-house, each loaded with three large, rough 
deal boxes. We did not need to ask what was in them. The 
owners of the wagons were made the undertakers. Many horses 

* Thoreau's Cape Cod, pp. 3-10. 



WRECKS AND MI NOT LIGHT. 465 

in carriages were fastened to the fences near the shore, and, for a 
mile or more, up and down, the beach was covered with people 
looking out for bodies, and examining the fragments of the wreck. 
There was a small island called Brook Island, with a hut on it, 
lying just off the shore. This is said to be the rockiest shore in 
Massachusetts, from Nantasket to Scituate, — hard sienitic rocks, 
which the waves have laid bare, but have not been able to crum- 
ble. It has been the scene of many a shipwreck. 

The brig St. John, from Galway, Ireland, laden with emigrants, 
was wrecked o;i Sunday morning ; it was now Tuesday morning, 
and the sea was still breaking violently on the rocks. There were 
eighteen or twenty of the same large boxes that I have men- 
tioned, lying on a green hillside, a few rods from the water, and 
surrounded by a crowd. The bodies which had been recovered, 
twenty-seven or eight in all, had been collected there. Some were 
rapidly nailing down the lids, others were carting the boxes away, 
and others were lifting the lids, which were yet loose, and peeping 
under the cloths, for each body, with such rags as still adhered to 
it, was covered loosely with a white sheet. I witnessed no signs 
of grief, but there was a sober despatch of business which was 
afifecting. One man was seeking to identify a particular body, 
and one undertaker or carpenter was calling to another to know 
in what box a certain child was put. I saw many marble feet and 
matted heads as the cloths were raised, and one livid, swollen, 
and mangled body of a drowned girl, — who probably had in- 
tended to go out to service in some American family, — to which 
some rags still adhered, with a string, half concealed by the flesh, 
about its swollen neck; the coiled-up wreck of a human hulk, 
gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the bone and muscle were 
exposed, but quite bloodless, — merely red and white, — with 
wide-open and staring eyes, yet lusterless, dead-lights ; or like the 
cabin windows of a stranded vessel, filled with sand. Sometimes 
there were two or more children, or a parent and child, in the 
same box, and on the lid would perhaps be written with red chalk, 
" Bridget such-a-one, and sister's child." The surrounding sward 
was covered with bits of sails and clothing. I have since heard, 
from one who lives by this beach, that a woman who had come 
over before, but had left her infant behind for her sister to bring, 
came and looked into these boxes, and saw in one, — probably 



466 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

the same whose superscription I have quoted, — her child in her 
sister's arms, as if the sister had meant to be found thus ; and 
within three days after, the mother died from the effect of that 
sight. 

We turned from this and walked along the rocky shore. In 
the first cove were strewn what seemed the fragments of a vessel, 
in small pieces mixed with sand and seaweed, and great quan- 
tities of feathers ; but it looked so old and rusty, that I at first 
took it to be some old wreck which had lain there many years. 
I even thought of Captain Kidd, and that the feathers were those 
which sea fowl had cast there ; and perhaps there might be some 
tradition about it in the neighborhood. I asked a sailor if that 
was the St. John. He said it was. I asked him where she 
struck. He pointed to a rock in front of us, a mile from the 
shore, called the Grampus Rock, and added : — 

" You can see a part of her now sticking up ; it looks hke a 
small boat." 

I saw it. It was thought to be held by the chain-cables and 
the anchors. I asked if the bodies which I saw were all that 
were drowned. 

" Not a quarter of them," said he. 

" Where are the rest ? " 

" Most of them right underneath that piece you see." 

It appeared to us that there was enough rubbish to make the 
wreck of a large vessel in this cove alone, and that it would take 
many days to cart it off. It was several feet deep, and here and 
there was a bonnet or a jacket on it. In the very midst of the 
crowd about this wreck, there were men with carts busily collect- 
ing the seaweed which the storm had cast up, and conveying it 
beyond the reach of the tide, though they were often obliged to 
separate fragments of clothing from it, and they might at any 
moment have found a human body under it. Drown who might, 
they did not forget that this weed was a valuable manure. This 
shipwreck had not produced a visible vibration in the fabric of 
society. 

About a mile south we could see, rising above the rocks, the 
masts of the British brig which the St. John had endeavored to 
follow, which had slipped her cables, and, by good luck, run into 
the mouth of Cohasset Harbor. A little further along the shore 



WRECKS AND MI NOT LIGHT. 467 

we saw a man's clothes on a rock ; further, a woman's scarf, a 
gown, a straw bonnet, the brig's caboose, and one of her masts 
high and dry, broken into several pieces. In another rocky cove, 
several rods from the water, and behind rocks twenty feet high, 
lay a part of one side of the vessel, still hanging together. It 
was, perhaps, forty feet long, by fourteen wide. I was even more 
surprised at the power of the waves, exhibited on this shattered 
fragment, than I had been at the sight of the smaller fragments 
before. The largest timbers and iron braces were broken super- 
fluously, and I saw that no material could withstand the power of 
the waves ; that iron must go to pieces in such a case, and an 
iron vessel would be cracked up like an eggshell on the rocks. 
Some of these timbers, however, were so rotten that I could 
almost thrust my umbrella through them. They told us that 
some were saved on this piece, and also showed where the sea 
had heaved it into this cove, which was now dry. When I saw 
where it had come in, and in what condition, I wondered that any 
had been saved on it. A little further on a crowd of men was 
collected around the mate of the St. John, who was telling his 
story. He was a slim-looking youth, who spoke of the captain 
as the master, and seemed a little excited. He was saying that 
when they jumped into the boat, she filled, and, the vessel lurch- 
ing, the weight of the water in the boat caused the painter to 
break, and so they were separated. Whereat one man came 
away, saying : — 

" Well, I don't see but he tells a straight story enough. You 
see, the weight of the water in the boat broke the painter. A 
boat full of water is very heavy," — and so on, in a loud and im- 
pertinently earnest tone, as if he had a bet depending on it, but 
had no humane interest in the matter. 

Another, a large man, stood near by upon a rock, gazing into 
the sea, and chewing large quids of tobacco, as if that habit were 
forever confirmed with him. 

" Come," says another to his companion, " let 's be off. We 've 
seen the whole of it. It 's no use so stay to the funeral." 

Further, we saw one standing upon a rock, who, we were told, 
was one that was saved. He was a sober-looking man, dressed 
in a jacket and gray pantaloons, with his hands in the pockets. 
I asked him a few questions, which he answered ; but he seemed 



468 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

unwilling to talk about it, and soon walked away. By his side 
stood one of the lifeboat men, in an oilcloth jacket, who told us 
how they went to the relief of the British brig, thinking that the 
boat of the St. John, which they passed on the way, held all her 
crew, — for the waves prevented their seeing those who were on 
the vessel, though they might have saved some had they known 
there were any there. A little further was the flag of the St. John 
spread on a rock to dry, and held down by stones at the corners. 
This frail, but essential and significant portion of the vessel, which 
had so long been the sport of the winds, was sure to reach the 
shore. There were one or two houses visible from these rocks, in 
which were some of the survivors recovering from the shock 
which their bodies and minds had sustained. One was not ex- 
pected to live. 

We kept on down the shore as far as a promontory called White 
Head, that we might see more of the Cohasset rocks. In a little 
cove, within half a mile, there were an old man and his son col- 
lecting, with their team, the seaweed which that fatal storm had 
cast up, as serenely employed as if there had never been a wreck 
in the world, though they were within sight of the Grampus Rock, 
on which the St. John had struck. The old man had heard that 
there was a wreck, and knew most of the particulars, but he said 
that he had not been up there since it happened. It was the 
wrecked weed that concerned him most, rockweed, kelp, and 
seaweed, as he named them, which he carted to his barnyard ; 
and those bodies were to him but other weeds which the tide cast 
up, but which were of no use to him. We afterwards came to the 
lifeboat in its harbor, waiting for another emergency, — and in 
the afternoon we saw the funeral procession at a distance, at the 
head of which walked the captain with the other survivors. 

On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as I might have 
expected. If I had found one body cast upon the beach in 
some lonely place, it would have affected me more. I sympa- 
thized rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle 
these poor human bodies was the order of the day. If this was 
the law of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? If the 
last day were come, we should not think so much about the sepa- 
ration of friends or the blighted prospects of individuals. I saw 
. that corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of battle, till 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 469 

they no longer affected us in any degree, as exceptions to the 
common lot of humanity. Take all the graveyards together, they 
are always the majority. It is the individual and private that 
demands our sympathy. A man can attend but one funeral in 
the course of his life, can behold but one corpse. Yet I saw that 
the inhabitants of the shore would be not a little affected by this 
event. They would watch there many days and nights for the 
sea to give up its dead, and their imaginations and sympathies 
would supply the place of mourners far away, who as yet knew 
not of the wreck. Many days after this, something white was 
seen floating on the water by one who was sauntering on the 
beach. It was approached in a boat, and found to be the body 
of a woman, which had risen in an upright position, whose white 
cap was blown back with the wind. I saw that the beauty of the 
shore itself was wrecked for many a lonely walker there, until he 
could perceive, at last, how its beauty was enhanced by wrecks 
like this, and it acquired thus a rarer and sublimer beauty still. 

Why care for these dead bodies? They really have no friends 
but the worms or fishes. Their owners were coming to the New 
World, as Columbus and the Pilgrims did, — they were within a 
mile of its shores ; but, before they could reach it, they emigrated 
to a newer world than ever Columbus dreamed of, yet one of 
whose existence we believe that there is far more universal and 
convincing evidence — though it has not yet been discovered by 
science — than Columbus had of this ; not merely mariners' tales 
and some paltry driftwood and seaweed, but a continual drift 
and instinct to all our shores. I saw their empty hulks that came 
to land ; but they themselves, meanwhile, were cast upon some 
shore yet further west, toward which we are all tending, and 
which we shall reach at last, it may be through storm and dark- 
ness, as they did. No doubt, we have reason to thank God that 
they have not been " shipwrecked into life again." The mariner 
who makes the safest port in Heaven, perchance, seems to his 
friends on earth to be shipwrecked, for they deem Boston Harbor 
the better place ; though perhaps invisible to them, a skillful 
pilot comes to meet him, and the fairest and balmiest gales blow 
off that coast, his good ship makes the land in halcyon days, and 
he kisses the shore in rapture there, while his old hulk tosses in 
the surf here. It is hard to part with one's body, but, no doubt, 



4/0 



HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 



it is easy enough to do without it when once it is gone. All their 
plans and hopes burst like a bubble ! Infants by the score 
dashed on the rocks by the enraged Atlantic Ocean ! No, no ! 
If the St. John did not make her port here, she has been tele- 
graphed there. The strongest wind cannot stagger a Spirit ; it is 
a Spirit's breath. A just man's purpose cannot be split on any 
Grampus or material rock, but itself will split rocks till it 
succeeds. 






■1^3 



■'°=| 



4 



From a drawing by John W. Bennett, keeper. 

The Old Iron Lighthouse on Minot Ledge, destroyed in the Gale 
ON April 16, 1851. 




The second year after this disaster of the St. John came 
a storm yet more furious upon a heaping full tide, and 
Swift's iron lighthouse upon Minot Ledge was knocked 
into bits. Some seamen have said that the iron frame 
would have stood out the gale but for a platform which 
the keeper had fastened into it as a sort of shelf for his 
boat. This srave an additional surface for the waves to 



WRECKS AND MI NOT LIGHT. 



471 



lift against, so that when the great tide came mounting sev- 
eral feet higher than usual the giant waves got their shoulders 
against the house and wrenched it off from the iron pillars, 
plunging the two men,* lantern and all, into the hissing deep. 

The glimmering light had been watched from the shore 
until far into the night. The highest tide was at about 
twelve o'clock midnight, April 16, 185 1, and the beacon 
must have fallen before that, because a bit of the wreck 
had been given time enough to drift into Sandy Cove, 
where it was landed at the highest reach of the tide.f 

The failure of this iron structure was an incentive to a 
less economical Congress to appropriate sufficient money 
to build a stone tower upon that submerged ledge, and to 
build it so strongly that the ledge itself must break before 
the lighthouse will fall. 

There was an interval of five years after the old light- 
house fell before the first blow was struck upon the ledge 
for the new one, July i, 1855. The twisted wreck of the old 
one first had to be cleared away, and much preliminary 
work had to be done. A description of the process, taken 
from the "New England Magazine" for October, 1896, is 
as follows : — 

Captain Barton S. Alexander of the engineer corps was chosen 
to superintend the construction, and for the various trades em- 
ployed in the task old Cohasset gave of her trained and tried 
sons. The very table upon which the plans were drawn was 
specially constructed, a massive piece of mahogany with a top 
leveled and squared to a nicety. The building of the model itself 
occupied the best of two winters, and the old shop still stands 
near the head of Cohasset Cove where Richard Bourne and Zac- 
cheus Rich toiled upon this important toy. The scale employed 
was one inch to the foot, and the model, which was to be seen in 
the United States Government Building at the Chicago exposition, 
is stone for stone a counterpart of the granite tower out in the 
Atlantic. 

* Joseph Wilson and Joseph Antonio. 

t The testimony of Captain Nathaniel Treat. 



472 



HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 



A lightship had in the mean time done duty as a beacon, and 
anecdotes are told of the superb Newfoundland dog who lived 
aboard and acted as carrier for the news bundles thrown out from 
passing vessels. Crowds would gather at steamer rails to witness 
his fearless plunge into the sea, where he would dart here and 
there until he had his mouth so full of news that barking was no 
longer possible, when he would swim for his floating home. 

The actual labor of building the present tower upon the ledge 
might be likened to holding at bay a wild beast robbed of its 




Scene on Government Island when the Sidnks for the LighthousS 
were being shaped. fishing schooners in the cove beyond. 

prey. The action of sea waves upon and about hidden or partly 
sunken ledges will at times defy the judgment and skill of the 
oldest sea dog afloat. Ever varying, always erratic, a swell pour- 
ing over a reef seems animated by a distinctly malignant power ; 
and woe to the dory caught disabled in its grasp ! From Cape 
Ann to Boston, from the Graves to Cape Cod, at Thatcher's, 
Straitsraouth, Egg Rock or Minot, the records of the sea rock 



WRECKS AND MI NOT LIGHT. 473 

lighthouses are dotted with overturns of small craft of all classes 
in the simple attempt at landing. 

In the face of this malevolent spirit of unrest, the Cohasset 
men sailed forth under Captain Alexander to conquest and 
achievement. The first step was to remove the stumps of piling 
which still adhered to the rock. " Three things," said Captain 
Alexander, " were necessary, a perfectly smooth sea, a dead calm, 
and low spring tides. This could only occur six times during any 
one lunation, three at full moon and three at the change." 

A party sailed from the cove and under these conditions 
grappled for the ruins. A Scandinavian who passed under the 
name of Peter Fox, a fearless fellow and an accomplished 
swimmer, would locate the iron which had been carried into 
deeper water, then diving with a light tackle would hook on to 
the fragment and strike out for the surface. In this way, and by 
wrenching from the rock-bed those fragments which still remained 
fixed, the ledge was cleared ; and a new iron framework was in- 
serted in the holes left by the wrecked tower, pile for pile, all 
save the central shaft, the cavity for which formed the center of 
the base circle, and above which the well for fresh water was 
afterwards shaped. The skeleton frame was of wrought iron, and 
was painted a bright red. The " spider " which capped it served 
as a landing stage during the subsequent proceedings. 

The working season was from April i to September 15. During 
the following January another fearful gale obscured the ledge ; and 
when the seas moderated it was seen that the work had shared the 
fate of the first tower. Even Captain Alexander's dauntless spirit 
was shaken. The labor of two seasons was cast aside like a toy 
house. " If tough wrought iron won't stand it," said he, " I have 
my fears about a stone tower." 

A boat load of sober men rowed out to the scene of the wreck, 
and thoroughly inspected the work of the storm, with the happy 
result, as it proved, of an entire revulsion of feeling. During the 
gale, a bark-rigged vessel, the New Empire, loaded with cotton, 
had been driven ashore, and lay in an easy position near White 
Head, the northern buttress of Cohasset Cove. At the suggestion 
of Captain John Cook, a famous Cohasset rigger, the party visited 
the disabled craft and inquired whether during the storm any 
unusual shock had been felt. No one had noticed any, but as the 



474 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

visitors turned to go home, a sailor came to the side and claimed 
the contrary, — and at the same moment a pair of sharp eyes dis- 
covered several faint traces of red upon the dark side of the hull. 
The evidence was weak, but undeniable ; and when the Empire 
was dry-docked at Boston her hull was found pierced in several 
places, and embedded among her cotton bales were some frag- 
ments of the piling.* 

Again was the work taken up — this time to meet with unquali- 
fied success. The rock was first cut to a succession of levels, 
determined by its natural structure, that which is termed the zero 
being one foot and nine inches above the mean low-water level. 
Outside of a diameter of thirty feet the rock was found to be too 
soft to be safely worked, and a circular base of that diameter 
was therefore agreed upon. An eyewitness thus describes the 
scene : — 

" Captain Alexander had constructed two large, stanch row- 
boats, naming one Deucalion and the other Pyrrha, — for he was 
a droll fellow, full of dry wit. The Deucalion was painted red, 
and this was more especially for his own use, while the Pyrrha, a 
green painted craft, was to carry the men. We would watch the 
tide from the cove, and just as soon as the ebb had reached the 
proper stage we would start out with it, and at the moment a 
square yard of ledge was bare of water out would jump a stone- 
cutter and begin work. Soon another would follow, and as fast 
as they had elbow room others still, until the rock would resemble 
a carcass covered with a flock of crows. The high-sounding 
names for the boats piqued the curiosity of the men not a little, 
until one finally inquired of Captain Alexander, ' What on airth it 
meant.' ' Oh,' replied he, ' Deucalion was a giant who went 
through Greece of old, picking up stones and throwing them out 
of the way, and Pyrrha was his wife who ate them,' — with which 
mixed definition the questioner was forced to be content." 

From the time when, on Sunday, the first day of July, 1855, 
the stroke of a hammer first rang out upon the summer air, until 
the rock was ready to receive the first cut stone, was nearly three 
years — years wrenched from the sullen power of old ocean. 
New dowels were inserted in the rock and successfully carried to 

* These facts seem to prove that the wrecked New Empire drove against the 
iron framework, which the waves alone had not broken down. 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



475 



a height of nearly twenty-five feet, or to where the twelfth course 
of masonry was afterwards laid. And now began the real work, 
— the laying of the courses ; and this, executed in a compar- 
atively short period of time, proved, as has many another noble 
superstructure, the value of 
the long, tedious prepara- 
tion, a task whose results 
were destined to remain 
forever unseen. During 
the year 1855 work upon 
the foundation pit could 
only be performed one 
hundred and thirty hours ; 
in 1856, one hundred and 
fifty-seven ; and in 1857, in 
' excavating and in laying 
four stones, one hundred 
and thirty hours and 
twenty-one minutes, the 
remainder of these years to 
be relinquished to the 
savage sea ! During 1858 

a small gain was made, when the last of the cutting and the laying 
of six courses of stone was accomplished in two hundred and 




Plan of rock as prepared to receive the foun- 
dation stones. " O" is 1' 9" above mean low 
water; the other parts are deeper than the 

central. 



First and second courses, 
reaching to the height of the 
natural rock in the center. 



Third course, showing the 
eight iron columns, and well 
in the center. 



eight hours. It was important that none but the best of granite 
should be employed, and samples from many localities were 
submitted to the severest tests. Of stone taken from Rockport, 



476 HIS TOR Y OF con A SSE T. ' 

Cohasset, and Quincy, that of the last-named place was proven 
to be "finest of grain, toughest, and clearest of sap." 

Visitors to Cohasset invariably wish to visit Government Island, 
which seems scarcely an island at all, so narrow is the deep, rocky 
tideway which separates it from the main land. Upon a level 
spot at the northern shore are two circular pavements of granite, 
as level as a ballroom floor, grass-grown and soil-covered at the 
edges, but exquisitely laid. It was here that the tower for Minot 
Ledge was first constructed. Stone sheds were erected ; and for 
many months the island presented a busy scene. From many 
Cohasset homes a later generation can look out to the distant 
tower that dots the ocean beyond the Glades, or to the nearer 
heights of Government Island, with honest pride in the craft of 
hands which have now, most of them, forever laid the tools aside. 
Cohasset will not soon forget them ; and their names deserve to 
be blazoned beside those who have stood between their country 
and her foe, for their work is enduring and multiplies in blessing 
as the years go by. 

There was Captain John Cook, a famous rigger of the days 
when seventy sail went out of Cohasset and Scituate, whose ability 
with a rope and block was something marvelous. He died only 
this last summer. He made the model for the derrick which was 
used in raising the stones in the lighthouse. A prize was offered 
for the most practical plan for this derrick, and his was accepted. 
The massive granite blocks were teamed to the cutters by Clark 
Cutting, unassisted save by his sturdy oxen. It is said he never 
had occasion to shift a stone twice. 

Captain Nichols Tower, — a proud old Cohasset name, that of 
Tower! — one of a family of noted skippers, captained the first 
vessels used to carry the finished stones out to the ledge. How- 
land Studley and Elijah Pratt are remembered as men of cool 
judgment and skilled hand ; while of the many others employed, 
none could have felt their responsibility more keenly than Wesley 
P. Button and George Reed, the latter of Quincy, who superin- 
tended the selection of the stone. 

Not the smallest detail of preparation escaped the watchful 
eye of Captain Alexander ; and down to the very pulley-blocks 
of the derricks, with their specially forged straps, everything was 
constructed with' a view to prevent the slightest mishap. These 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 477 

derricks were the pride of the sparmaker's art ; and the perfect- 
running, flawless pulley-blocks of lignum vitae were from the care- 
ful hands of Richard Bourne, one of the model builders, who first 
laid out the circumference of the ground plot at the ledge. Mr. 
Bourne, now a resident of Clinton, Mass., is still hale and hearty, 
and enjoys with a keen relish the recollection of this splendid 
undertaking of his native town. 

The Quincy cutters avowed that such chiseling had never left 
the hand of man ; and a closer look into the manner of joining 




MiNOT Lighthouse, half grown. 
From an old photograph. 

the tower will prove that the need was of the first order. The 
first few courses bear no semblance to regular masonry. The 
lines of junction formed by the juxtaposition of the various rock- 
levels trace out the most erratic curvings, and suggest a snarl of 
wire loosely confined within a circle. As the courses grew, how- 
ever, clearing first one and then another of the points of rock, 
they began to take shape and to admit of a radial arrangement, 



478 



niSTOKY OF COH ASSET. 



until, reaching the third, the last of the bed rock was covered, 
and the courses proceeded with regularity and greater speed. 
When it is considered that each stone must be cut to fit its neigh- 
bors above, below, and at either side, and exactly conform to the 
next inner row upon the same level ; that eight iron piles, taper- 
ing as they ascended, must be allowed for in certain of the stones ; 
and that those of the innermost row, the ends of the eight great 
"headers," must be finished each as a fragment of the bore of 
the well that drills its way from the first floor nearly to the bed 
rock, it will be seen that nothing short of perfect cutting and 
flawless joining could be tolerated. Each stone was secured to 
the course under it by two or more bolts or dowels of three-inch 
gun metal, that material having been selected from a variety of 
metals which had received an under-water test of more than a 
year. The hole in the undermost stone was drilled flaring at the 

bottom, and the bolt, its end split into two 

tiny clefts, was spread 

and clinched when 

driven home. Strap 

iron inserted between 

the courses kept the 

stones apart sufficient- 
ly for the flowing in 

of Portland cement, 

which becomes almost 

literally a part of the 
solid stone. Each stone is dovetailed to those upon either side. 
This process holds good up to the twenty-third course, which, 
forty-four feet above the rock, serves as the first course of the 
"shell" or hollow portion containing the keepers' rooms. Here 
each course is "joggled" by a middle annulus to the course 
which it rests on. At the top the interior is arched over, and 
upon the outside the top course flares outward in a severely plain 
but shapely cornice. 

As the hammers clinked ashore, the busy chisels were slowly re- 
ducing the ledge to a condition to receive the fitted stones ; but 
the progress out at sea was of necessity tedious and protracted. 
" Frequently," says Captain Alexander, " one or the other of the 
conditions would fail, and there were at times months, even in 





Twenty-second course, 
the floor of the inside 
of the lighthouse. 



Thirtieth course, floor 
oi bedroom. 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 



479 



summer, when we could not land there at all." But once well above 
the hungry water, the difficulties of the task were lessened, and the 
last 26 courses were laid in 377 hours during the year 1859. 

Captain Cook loved his joke, and upon one occasion, while in 
charge of the men at the ledge, he solemnly inquired of a recent 
comer, a lank stripling from Vermont, " Can you swim, sir?" 
" No, sir, I cannot. Why do you ask? " 

The mischievous skipper looked nervously around and replied : 
" Well, if Captain Alexander knew you were at work here and 
unable to swim, I — I should be a little afraid he might discharge 
ye. Now, just you strap one of these life preservers on to you, 
and if you get washed off we'll pick you up." 

A number of the clumsy old " hourglass " style of life preserv- 
ers were lying upon the deck of the schooner which attended the 
cutters, and throughout part of one day 
the luckless youth labored with his ungainly .. ' 

incubus strapped, bustle 
fashion, to his back. Pres- 
ently some one announced, ; 
" Red boat coming ; " and / 
what excuse the master joker . "^ 
advanced for the removal of 

Floor o, lantern. ^^^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^^^^ ^^^^^ Corn.ce course. 

man settled with him ashore, is not stated. 

Each stone having been approved, and the courses actually laid 
upon the island, the work at the ledge was simply a repetition, 
although the conditions out upon the bosom of the heaving 
Atlantic must have given a rare zest to the undertaking, not to be 
found ashore. The shaft is purely a frustum of a cone, the useless 
tree shape at the base being discarded. 

Like a page of fiction runs the anecdote of one Noyes, who 
was employed upon both the iron and granite towers. Owing 
to some petty official friction he ceased work and for a time 
disappeared. During the Rebellion a fine cHpper ship, the 
Golden Fleece, with Cohasset men aboard of her, fell a prey to 
the marauding Alabama. As the men filed aboard their con- 
queror, one glanced up the side, and there, leaning over the 
poop rail, in the uniform of a Confederate naval officer, was 
the renegade Noyes. 



48o 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 




Section of Minot Lighthouse, show- 
ing Six Rooms, Lantern, Well, 
Iron Columns, etc. 



The tower was finished Septem- 
ber 15, i860, just in time for the 
autumnal fury of the Atlantic to 
accord a full test to its right of 
existence. The total cost was 
about ^300,000. Of rough stone 
there were used 3,5 14 tons, of ham- 
mered stone 2,367 tons, and from 
this amount were produced 1,079 
separate blocks. The first cut 
stone was laid July 9, 1857, and 
the lowest block July 11, 1858. 
The entire time consumed was 
1,102 hours 21 minutes. 

The dimensions are not realized 
from a distant view of the tower. 
From the lowest stone to the top 
of the pinnacle is 114 feet i inch. 
The height of the focal plane 
above the lowest point is 96 feet 
I inch, and above mean high- 
water mark, 84 feet 7 inches. 
The diameter of the first full 
course, the third from the 
bottom, is 30 feet, and that 
forming the granite floor, or 
the top of the twenty-second, 
is 23 feet 6 inches. Its com- 
pletion must have seemed to 
the builders like the finishing 
touch to a pedestal, for such 
it was, to the lighter yet no 
less important work 
which grew, course 
by course, above it. 
The lantern parapet 
rises four courses 
above the cornice 
of the tower proper, 



WRECKS AND MINOT LIGHT. 48 1 

and is crowned by the lantern itself, strapped and bolted to the 
unyielding stone. High guards of iron railing encircle both the 
cornice and the parapet, and from this dizzy height the curving 
outlines of the awful reefs can be traced for many a fathom. 

What an ocean graveyard is guarded by the gray old tower, its 
foot streaked slimy and green with the washings of the tides ! 
The stanch pilot boat Lawlor has within the past twelvemonth 
added her bones to the bleaching skeletons of oak which strew 
the bottom between the Minot and the dreaded Harding's, — 
" somewhere within two or three miles," says her survivor; and 
about the same "somewhere " from the light, perhaps nearer, the 
Allentown went down in the blizzard of 1888, a fine iron steamer 
sinking with all on board. It is said that in one spot the ledge 
runs evenly but a few feet below the surface for several fathoms, 
parallel with the shore, with its outer wall a sheer drop of nine 
fathoms ! 

The keepers and their monotonous life have been thoroughly 
introduced to a public which has only of late begun to remember 
the pride with which this noble triumph of peace was at the time 
received. 

The day of the corner-stone oration, with no less a personage 
than Edward Everett for orator of the day, still lives, a vivid 
memory in the minds of the people of the South Shore. 

The powerful light of the second order has for more than thirty 
years sent its aggressive rays out upon the ugly expanse of black 
ocean which nightly encircles the tower with its vast cold plain. 
But of late a change has come over the staid old sentinel. Weary 
with his quarter-century vigil, has he given up the struggle and 
tossed his superb torch hissing into the restless waters that chafe 
his foot? There is black darkness upon the ledge, although the 
stars fleck the very horizon and the shore hghts twinkle in radiant 
perspective from Cohasset to Strawberry Hill, and the unquench- 
able fire of Boston Light sears a pathway of shriveled silver as its 
powerful beam wheels slowly around in its faithful circle. But, 
ah! — from the blackness above the dread Minot there leaps, 
bursts, a mighty outpouring of light ! It quivers, throbs, and is 
gone. A space of darkness — and again the unbearable flash, — 
once, twice, four times, — and again darkness, and a tremendous 
relay of power. Then — one, two, three — and the number of the 



482 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



Minot station has been spelled out in splendid telegraphy upon 
the ebon scroll of night. 

Lighthouse inaugurated October 2, 1858. Addresses on the occasion by Captain 
B. S. Alexander, Mayor Lincoln, Hon. Edward Everett, Col. J. T. Heard, Dr. 
Winslow Lewis, Hon. L. B. Coniins, C. R. Train, and Hon. B. C. Clark. 

On November 25, 1888, the schooner Stella Lee was driven upon Bassing Beach. 
By the same storm the Sasanoa was driven across from Gloucester Harbor and 
was thrown high upon Pleasant Beach. The dismantled wreck was so picturesque 
that Messrs. Luce, Kendall, and Manning bought it and kept it there for seven or 
eight years, until some vandals burned it. During this storm the H. C. Higginson 
was driven upon the rocks at Atlantic Hill. Captain James Anderson, of Cohasset, 
with his volunteer crew shot a line over the mast ; it caught securely, and three 
men of the four who were lashed in the rigging were taken off alive ; the fourth was 
dead. Manuel E. Salvador, Frank F. Antome, and John J. Ainslie received bronze 
medals for bravery on this occasion. 

But a storm far more destructive than any other in the history of our coast has 
Jtist broken upon us November 27, 1898, while this book is being printed. Over 
two hundred and fifty lives have been reported lost upon the shores of this one 
State. Fifty-six vessels, including the massive passenger steamer Portland, have 
■ been cast away or hammered to splinters. Upon our own Cohasset shore two 
vwrecks have fallen. One was a coal barge heavily loaded which was dashed to bits 
upon Black Rock. Three of the crew jumped upon the island. Our Cohasset vol- 
unteer crew in a lifeboat endeavored to rescue these men, but the sea was so vio- 
lent that the boat was capsized before she was fairly started, throwing her crew into 
the water. Captain James, of Hull, with his United States life-saving crew in their 
own lifeboat, made a long detour to the island and finally rescued the castaways. 
Another wreck was the fine new fishing schooner Juniata, of Boston. She was 
returning to port with her catch, when the northeast gale with its blinding snow 
-overtook her. She anchored several miles north of Minot Light, but the sea broke 
her cables and the wind ripped her new sails into rags and drove her with her crew 
of eighteen men lashed in the rigging to our shore. She lodged first upon a ledge 
outside of Brush Island and then she was driven past the western end of Brush 
Island to the breakwater upon Beach Island, where the entire crew landed in safety. 
The destruction of roads and buildings near the sea has been the greatest in our 
history. The road at Pleasant Beach and Sandy Beach has been washed out, 
stone walls and gravel and all, to a depth of six feet in some places, while in others 
hundreds of tons of beach stones have buried the road out of sight. The sea 
leaped the barriers and swept bath houses across Little Harbor, landing them a half 
mile away. At the Cove, houses were flooded, and pleasure boats which were sup- 
posed to be hauled up to safe distances were borne upon the tidal wave into the 
street. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE CIVIL WAR. 

THERE is one point of connection with the Civil 
War which belongs peculiarly to Cohasset. The 
chief person in all that epoch, Abraham Lincoln, de- 
scended from one of our earliest Cohasset homes. The 
homesteads built by Mordecai Lincoln, the great-great- 
great-grandfather of that infinitely greater son, are yet 
standing near the mouth of Bound Brook, one in Scitu- 
ate and the second in Cohasset. The ancestor* who first 
went westward from New England to be a forbear of the 
nation's hero learned his first lessons of toil in our old 
Lincoln Mill at the south end of the town. 

The time came when our citizens, many of them rela- 
tives of Abraham Lincoln, were called upon to vote for 
him or to reject him. The summer and fall of i860 was 
full of an unusual political excitement for this quiet ham- 
let, not much given to politics. There were a few South- 
ern sympathizers here who abominated the efforts of 
abolitionists on behalf of the negro slaves. 

Slaves had been formerly toilers on some of our farms 
and even worshipers in the church now standing upon 
our Common. As early as the year 1683, as we read in 
Chapter IX, there was an Indian slave farmed out to a 
Cohasseter, Cornelius Canterbury. For about a century 
slaves were owned, Indian and negro, by a few of the 
wealthier of our citizens. One suggestive item in the 
inventory! of John Jacob's estate, 1759, was a negro man 
valued at fifty pounds and a negro woman valued at 
nothing, coming immediately after the item of " live- 
stock." But when our State Constitution was adopted, in 

* Mordecai the son of Mordecai. (See Hingham Genealogy.) 
fTo be found in the Probate Office, Boston. 

483 



484 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

1780, the words "free and equal" constituted a legal bar 
against slavery. 

There were no property interests therefore at stake in 
our community over the nation's vexatious problem. Polit- 
ical prejudices were not wholly absent, however; for 
after Lincoln had been elected the rancor of some was 
so bitter that they cursed him publicly, calling him a 
baboon and other epithets too indecent to repeat. When 
Sumter was fired upon the next spring, and volunteers 
were called forth to defend our nation, these bitter parti- 
sans added their hope that every man who should go 
"might rot there" ! But the rising of public wrath soon 
choked into silence every murmur of such disloyalty, and 
our brave young men soon offered themselves to arms 
under the folds of our national banner. 

To encourage patriotism William B. Johnson, who lived 
at the corner of Beechwood and South Main Streets, 
gave the town a flag. It was hoisted amid patriotic 
speeches upon a huge staff in our Common by a company 
of girls representing the several States of the Union. 

An amusing incident which illustrates the spirit of 
loyalty is remembered as follows : It was reported one 
day that a man living upon Cedar Street near Hull Street 
had been seen defiantly flourishing a Confederate flag. 
Men grew so indignant over the matter -that a squad of 
them determined to tar and feather the offender. They 
got a bucket of tar and a bag of feathers, and under the 
leadership of Oakes Lawrence, a wide-awake patriot, they 
marched through the streets amid cheers and much noise 
to the home of the Southern sympathizer. Some say that 
the man when he heard them coming got his shotgun 
and stood at bay in his door, daring them to come on with 
their tar. But without resorting to violence he was 
finally persuaded to honor his country by spurning the 
Confederate flag and by putting up the stars and stripes, 
which he loyally saluted. 



THE CIVTL WAR. 



485 



In response to the call of President Lincoln thousands 
throughout the State offered themselves in the month of 
April, 1 86 1. Our own town held several public meetings 
to discuss the burning topic of the war and to kindle 
patriotism that might lead to enlistments. The recruiting 
officer in our town hall, after a mass meeting which many- 
citizens still hold fresh in memory, received the voluntary 
enlistments of all who would sign their names. 




Common, from the North End, about 1840. 



The first one to step forward to take the pen was 
William F. Thayer, forty-four years of age, with a family 
of sons and daughters, the oldest just coming to maturity. 
He was able to go, and he hated slavery and he was not 
afraid to fight. Another was J. Foster Doane, twenty-five 
years of age, a grandson of Elisha Doane. A third was 
Oliver E. Simpson, of twenty-four years. These men 
could not be taken for the first call of April 16, so they 
and two others, making five, were enlisted for a three 



486 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

years' service in response to the second call, of May 3, 
1861. 

The other two were Forres tet^ A. Pelby, twenty-four 
years, and Charles F. Wells, twenty-three years. 

Readville was the camping ground for the recruits, 
where they might be drilled and equipped for service. 

Cohasset already had one of her sons. Zealous B. 
Tower, in the regular army, stationed at Fort Pickens, 
Fla., where he was promoted to the rank of major in 
the corps of engineers. His education at West Point, 
where he graduated at the head of his class, July i, 1841, 
had revealed the constructive talent which was common 
in some of the Tower family. He had been assistant 
professor of engineering and had been engaged in the 
construction of defenses at Hampton Roads, Va. In the 
Mexican War he had served with much distinction, lead- 
ing General Riley's column of attack at Contreras ; and 
being wounded at the storming of Chapultepec, he had 
been brevetted major for gallant and meritorious services. 
Now that the Civil War had broken upon the nation, 
the services of this capable officer were still further 
drafted by giving him the rank of brigadier general of 
volunteers. 

The war cry, " On to Richmond," had forced the third 
call for volunteers, June 17, 1861, and Cohasset supplied 
thirty-four more men upon a three years' enlistment. 
But our only men at the front at this time were Doane, 
Thayer, Pelby, Simpson, all of Company I, and Wells, 
of Company G. These were in the First Regiment of 
Massachusetts volunteers and were in the opening cam- 
paign of Bull Run. 

After crossing the Potomac the march was taken up 
through Germantown, Va. The Confederate outposts were 
ready to resist the march to Richmond, and a part of 
the brigade under Richardson got tangled in a skirmish 
at Blackburn's Ford. Company I was in the fight, and 



THE CIVIL WAR. 487 

one of our Cohasset men, Corporal Oliver E. Simpson, 
was among the thirteen killed in that first taste of battle. 
His comrade, William F. Thayer, lifted the dead body 
upon his own shoulder, and carrying it up back of a meet- 
ing-house, buried it there, the first of our men to die in 
the great cause. 

On the third day, July 2r, the memorable battle of Bull 
Run was fought, followed by the retreat of the Union 
forces. The four other Cohasset men escaped with their 
lives. The work of William F. Thayer was that of a 
commissary sergeant, who had to draw rations and to 
issue them. A part of the time while the army of the 
Potomac was moving from place to place, a drove of sev- 
eral hundred cattle had to be guarded for use, being 
slaughtered for daily food. Food that could not be used 
nor safely carried away from a battlefield had to be 
burned. On one occasion our sergeant, to prevent a lot 
of provisions from falling into Confederate hands, burned 
ten barrels of rice, seven barrels of salt pork, and ten 
barrels of whisky. Rice was very unpopular stuff, be- 
cause the company cooks had only iron kettles for boiling 
it, and the rice would almost invariably burn on, to the 
disgust of hungry soldiers. 

The duties of J. F. Doane were largely with the officers 
as a clerk and a wagoner, while Forrester A. Pelby was 
promoted in the regular line from sergeant to second 
lieutenant, August 26, 1861, first lieutenant, July 18, 1862, 
and captain, March 2, 1863, 

The defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run was humili- 
ating to the loyal citizens of Cohasset, and they began to 
feel as never before the seriousness of the Rebellion. 
During that autumn of 1861 and the winter months of 
1862 there were many more citizens coming to the des- 
perate decision to fight for the Union. The selectmen 
reported thirty-four men furnished for three years' serv- 
ice, in response to the general order of June 25, 1861. 



488 HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 

Who they all were the writer has been unable to ascer- 
tain, but some of them were as follows : — 

Leonard IV. Minot enlisted in Dedham in the Eight- 
eenth Regiment, which went into winter encampment at 
Hall's Hill near the nation's capital, and served on picket 
duty. In the spring of 1862 Minot contracted a severe 
cold and was taken to Philadelphia, where he died of 
pleurisy, April 23, 1862. 

Franklin Joseph Crane, of Company K, went into the 
Seventh Regiment, which did some serious fighting upon 
Virginia soil, including the battles of Fair Oaks, Fred- 
ericksburg, and The Wilderness. 

Ezekiel P. Bourne went into the Twelfth Regiment, 
Company H, with a number of Weymouth men. Leav- 
ing Fort Warren July 23, this regiment was stationed 
near the Potomac River during August and September. 
They had to do a lot of furious marching, sometimes 
freezing and shoeless during that winter, having but one 
taste of battle at Rappahannock, Va., the next spring, 
April 18, 1862. Later in the month of August a battle 
was fought at Cedar Mountain. Then in the latter part 
of August came the sharp struggle at Manassas, or the 
second Bull Run. 

At one o'clock on the last day of the fight the brigade 
under command of our general, Zealous B. Tower, was 
placed in support of Heintzelman and Reno in their 
attempt to turn the Confederate left, and when that 
attempt failed General Tower was ordered to Bald Hill, 
which the enemy were making a desperate attempt to 
possess. The Twelfth Regiment formed the right of the 
brigade, which took up the battle bravely ; but the per- 
sistent onsets of the Confederates finally forced back the 
Union line. General Tower was severely wounded in the 
leg, and was laid up in the hospital at Washington until 
well enough to return to Cohasset for complete recovery.* 

*See Massachusetts in the War, by James L. Bowen, p. 224. 



THE CIVIL WAR. 489 

The next February, 1863, Ezekiel P. Bourne was dismissed 
on account of being disabled. 

Charles Frederick Bennett was in the Sixteenth Regi- 
ment, Company A. Corporal at twenty-one years of age. 
The company was made up mostly of Cambridge men, 
and they left Boston August 17 by way of Fall River for 
the scene of war. The next June, the twelfth, they were 
attached to the corps of Heintzelman just referred to in 
the account of Manassas, and their first blood was in the 
skirmish of Fair Oaks three days later. Other battles 
in which Corporal Bennett fought were Malvern H\J1, Va., 
August 5, 1862, where he was wounded ; Chancellorsville, 
May 2, 1863; Gettysburg, Pa., July, 1863; Mine Run, 
Va., November, 1863 ; The Wilderness, Va., May, 1864; 
Spottsylvania, Va., May, 1864; Hanover Junction, Va., 
May, 1864; Cold Harbor, Va., June, 1864; and Petersburg, 
Va., July 12, 1864. That was a three years' service in the 
thick of the fight. 

In this connection should be mentioned Bennett's chum, 
Andreiv W. Williams, who served in the regular United 
States army in the Battalion of Engineers, Company C, 
being engaged for three years in all the principal battles 
of the Army of the Potomac except the second Bull Run 
and Gettysburg. 

Three others who should be added to our Cohasset list 
of engineers or sappers and miners are Charles H. Pratt, 
Zenas Stoddard, Jr., and Elbridge Willcntt. The last 
named was in the service as a mason, and Zenas Stoddard 
had the rank of orderly sergeant for daring conduct. 

George F. Leithead was a member of the Nineteenth 
Regiment, Company G. This regiment was prominent in 
the famous Seven Days' Battle at the beginning of July, 
1862, when the Army of the Potomac changed its base to 
James River. High praise at Antietam was won by this 
regiment September 17, 1862. After many engagements 
Leithead was discharged disabled, April 2, 1863. 



490 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Alvan T'^w^r marched in Twentieth Regiment, Company 
A. This regiment endured a terrible slaughter at Harri- 
son's Island, October 21, 1861. The winter camp was 
broken February 25, 1862, and they were started upon 
the Peninsular campaign, Virginia, April 5. Alvan Tower 
saw but little of this campaign, for he died in the General 
Hospital June 8, 1862, from the effect of wounds. 

Samuel K. Dunster joined the Twenty-fourth Regiment, 
Company K, as one of the Cohasset quota, but after- 
wards reenlisted for Lynn and was a hospital steward. 

Benjamin Franklin Oakes was of the same regiment, 
Company H. He began his army career at nineteen 
years, a sergeant, and was promoted to a captain August 
26, 1863, in the Thirty-fifth United States Cavalry troops. 

Amos L. Poole belonged to the Twenty-sixth Regiment, 
Company F. From September 12, 1 861, to August 26, 
1865, this man was in the service of this regiment which 
was the famous Sixth, rehabilitated after its first three 
months' term, in which the Baltimore riot spilled the first 
blood of war. 

James Shay was in the Thirtieth Regiment, Company 
D. Only about one year of service was allowed this man, 
for he died at Carrollton, La., October 22, 1862. This 
Thirtieth was the regiment raised by General Butler for 
the capture of New Orleans. It was transported to Ship 
Island, near the mouth of the Mississippi River, where 
the forces for that campaign were gathered during the 
winter and spring of 1862. 

Here in the far South the service of Cohasset was again 
utilized in an important function. The ship North America, 
which bore the Thirtieth Regiment April 15-18 from Ship 
Island up to the head of South West Pass in the Missis- 
sippi River, was captained by James Collier,* a Cohasset 
mariner of a family of mariners. Farther up the river to 

* A picture of the North America now hangs upon the wall in Captain ColHer's 
old home at the head of Beech Street. 



THE CIVIL WAR. 



491 



New Orleans the vessel sailed after the capture of the 
forts, drawing up before that angry city on the second day 
of May, 1862. The climate of those low lands was too 
trying for our Northern men. After the battle of Baton 
Rouge the health of the men was badly broken, and our 
James Shay was one of the many unfortunates who died 
from exposure and disease. 

Leander IV. Groce, of the Thirty-second Regiment, Com- 
pany A, was another of the enlistments of 1861. In the 
same regiment were five more who enlisted for the credit 
of Cohasset in December of 1861 or in February, 1862. 
Geoi'ge A. Litchfield, twenty-two years of age, George H. 
Proiity, of thirty years, and Martin T. Ripley, of thirty-five, 
all belonging to the same Company F ; Robert B. Shaw, 
just come of age, and Joseph M. Towle, one year older, 
belonged to Company E. A friend, Warren Fuller, of 
Scituate, made up the seven who went from here into the 
Thirty-second Regiment at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor. 

The next May 25 six companies of the regiment were 
hustled southward to protect the national capital. A dev- 
astating malaria at Harrison's Landing, Va., marked 
Litchfield one of its victims August 15, 1862. The regi- 
ment joined the shattered Army of the Potomac at Manas- 
sas, and followed in the wake of the main body back 
towards the Potomac. The battle of Fredericksburg fell 
hard upon this regiment December 15, 1862. After various 
maneuvers in Virginia the regiment was tramped back to 
Pennsylvania during June, 1863, to take part in the great 
battle of Gettysburg. Groce had been discharged for dis- 
ability January 6, 1863. It was the sad lot of Ripley to 
be taken prisoner June i, 1864, and to be starved to death 
at Andersonville, Ga., August 21. 

Besides the infantry regiments here noted there were 
some heavy artillery men from Cohasset upon the third 
call. James S. Beal, at twenty-two years of age, joined Com- 
pany A of the First Battalion Heavy Artillery, February 



492 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



26, 1862, Also in the same company at that time went 
Samuel Beal, James L.Bates, Henry C. Hardzvick, JoJin G. 
Haydeji, John L. Manuel, Oliver D. Morey, Bardin A. 
Prouty, George Spooner, Francis C. Tower, Charles Whittier, 
and William Whittier. Of these, John L. Manuel died in 
the service at Fort Warren, Boston Harbor. 

Besides these whom we have enumerated as the army 
enlistments of 1861 and the first three months of 1862 




Photo, Harriet A. Nickerson. 



Lily Pond. 



there were several who entered the navy. Perhaps the 
earliest of these were Daniel Bray Lincoln, a descendant 
of our first Daniel of two centuries ago, enlisting May, 
1861, onboard the Minnesota, and George B. N. Tozuer, 
who took the position of third assistant engineer upon the 
Huron, and who afterwards was promoted to first assistant 
engineer. 

Later, July, 1861, there was Lincoln Bates, a sailor, on 



THE CIVIL IV A R. 493 

board the Sciota. In March of the next year Alexander 
Lindscy went into the service as sailor upon the Ino. At 
the same time Thomas T. Spear engaged in the St. Claire, 
and was promoted September, 1862, to quarter gunner 
in the Fort Donelson fight on the Mississippi River, sup- 
porting General Grant. 

In May of that year, 1862, Stephen P. Lincoln enlisted 
as sailor upon the King Fisher. While procuring water 
one day, June 2, 1862, on the coast of Florida, he was 
captured and taken to Libbey Prison. Here he fortunately 
had only three months when he was exchanged in October. 

It was the spring of 1862. The war had now dragged 
on for a full year, and a serious disappointment filled many 
hearts who had prophesied that the Rebellion could be 
quelled in three months. Many who were lukewarm sup- 
porters of the government at first had grown so indignant 
at the persistent and widespread efforts of the confedera- 
tion that they were prepared to go at the enemy with 
more determination than ever before. 

The fifth call for State volunteers was issued upon the 
Fourth of July, and men in Cohasset began a new series 
of enlistments. The town furnished thirty-eight men in 
response to this call for a three years' service, and it spent 
six thousand fifty dollars to secure the men. 

Among the first to be mustered in at this call were six 
young men, three of them not twenty years of age, who 
chose the heavy artillery service of the First Battalion, 
Company A : Sergeants Charles A. Pratt and JoJin W. 
Tower ; Corporals George T. J/orej a.nd Caleb F. B. Tilden; 
also Vr'w^LtQS Joseph J. Bates, who was afterwards promoted 
to second lieutenant, "AXidiJoJin J. Richards. These became 
a part of the same Company A which already had drilled 
twelve of our Cohasset men in Fort Warren, Boston Har- 
bor, for their heavier work in Virginia. 

Then followed, August 9, John A. Treat and Sylvamis 
Franklin Treat, who were enrolled in the Fourteenth Regi- 



494 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



ment, but the whole regiment was soon transformed into 
heavy artillery of the First Regiment. These two broth- 
ers were in some heavy fighting at Winchester, Fred- 
ericksburg, Tolopotomy, Cold Harbor, and Petersburg. 
John A. Treat was taken prisoner at Petersburg, June 22, 
1864, when the enemy cut through a slack place in the 
Union lines and came upon our men from the rear in the 
thick woods. After being confined in the Andersonville 
Prison pen for a while, he was transferred to Florence, 
where he died November 23 from starvation. 

Isaac PJiinney was mustered into the Thirty-fifth Regi- 
ment of infantry, Company A, in which he served his full 
three years. Thomas Lathrop was mustered into Com- 
pany G, August 12, 1862, belonging to the First Regi- 
ment, of which we spoke when five of our first recruits 
went into it. Two more, Albert F. Barjies and Harrison 
Henry, were enrolled in the Twenty-fourth Regiment, 
Company A, on August 14, where already two men from 
Cohasset had entered. 

On the twentieth day of that month seven men, the 
largest number yet mustered from our town into any one 
company, joined Company D of the Thirty-eighth Regi- 
ment. Their rendezvous was at Lynnneld, and their 
names as follows : Daniel P. Arnold, George Arnold, Ed- 
ward H. Arnold, Be la Bates, Joseph W. Fish, Thomas O. 
Hayden, and Thomas Williston. The regiment went by 
rail and boat through Worcester, New London, Jersey 
City to Washington, August 27. From here, after some 
fussing back and forth, they went to Hampton Roads on 
board the Baltic, where they exercised until December 8. 
Then they sailed around into the Gulf of Mexico and 
landed at Ship Island, where they did some more tiresome 
loafing. By the next February they did a little marching 
in the vicinity of Baton Rouge and Carrollton, where our 
James Shay had died a few months before. 

Edward H. Arnold had been disabled before the south- 



THE CIVIL WAR. 



495 



ern voyage was undertaken, and of the other two Arnolds, 
George, after some fighting near New Orleans, was dis- 
abled May 20, while Daniel endured the strain until 
October 31, when he died. Some desperate fighting was 
done during that summer by the Thirty-eighth at Port 
Hudson before its surrender to the Union arms on July 
9. Thomas Williston was dismissed October 20, 1863, on 
account of disability. Three were left of our Cohasset 
seven to return by transport to Fortress Monroe, Va., 
whence they marched to Washington. 

The idle beginning had developed into some hard fight- 
ing at the South, and it continued hard now when the regi- 
ment returned to the Army of the Shenandoah. At the 
furious battle of Cedar Creek on October 19, Bela Bates 
was last seen fighting for the flag ; but no one can tell 
what fate he suffered. The military records report him 
"missing in action." These things happened to the re- 
cruits who were mustered in August 20, 1862. 

The following day, August 21, 1862, our State ordered 
another quota of men for service, this time only a short 
service of nine months, to carry the war along until the 
next spring. But before finding out who responded, we 
shall have to complete the list of thirty-eight men on the 
call for three years of which we have counted just one half. 

On September 2 Leavitt Wkittier wsis, mustered at Dor- 
chester in Company H of the Thirty-ninth Regiment, his 
two brothers, Charles and William, having entered, as we 
saw, the heavy artillery. Twenty days later William R. 
Cai'l was recruited in Company E of the Forty-first, which 
was mounted the following June and became the Third 
Cavalry. After about four months' service in the cavalry 
Carl was dismissed on account of disability, November 5, 
1863. 

The larger part of this quota was made up by heavy 
artillery enlistments. Before the middle of October the 
following six became a part of Company B of the First 



496 HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 

Battalion : Sergeant Thomas Tower, Corporal Eiistis IV. 
Tildeii, Privates George A. Fish, William H. Morse, Alonzo 
L. Palmer, and Levi C. Tower. Two more were added 
later, Isaac H. Tower the next January and CJiarles H. 
Willis ton in May. 

Another squad of eight joined on January 10, 1863, the 
Third Unattached Company, which afterwards became 
Company A of the Third Regiment, Heavy Artillery : 
Sergeant William H. Remington, Corporal Charles F. Davis, 
Privates Levi L. Minot, TJiomas Kane, Alfred Haskell, 
William F. Harris, Jr., David J. Co?nllard, 2ind John Clarke. 
The next year, upon a later draft, Wallace Willcntt joined 
the company, making a total of nine. Four of these after- 
wards joined the nav)^, Couillard, Haskell, Kane, and 
Minot. Remington became second lieutenant May 23, 
1864. These men had to perform garrison duty in Boston 
Harbor until the spring of 1864, when they were ordered 
to report to Washington. 

This completes the quota of thirty-eight men except 
one. Several navy enlistments might be drawn from to 
fill out this one, but there was one of the Thayer boys who 
perhaps should be counted to fill out the thirty-eight. 
Ancil P. Thayer enlisted at Braintree, August 6, 1862, in 
the Third Regiment of Cavalry, Company K, dying upon 
the battlefield near Winchester, Va., September 19, 1864. 

To return to the enlistments under the nine months' 
call, which began before the three years' enlistments 
were filled, we find Andrew J. Studley mustered in on 
September 8 in Company F of the Sixth Regiment. 
The most of this regiment's duties were in the vi- 
cinity of Blackwater River, on the southern coast of 
Virginia. One terrible day was the last of January, 1863, 
when three distinct fights were pushed through, with a 
march of forty miles in twenty-four hours. They were 
busy keeping as much of the Confederate army as possible 
away from northern Virginia. 



THE CIVIL WAR. 497 

Another nine months' enlistment was in the Forty- 
fourth Regiment, into which were mustered September 12, 
Thomas O. S. Gihbs and William Randall, both for Com- 
pany C. Their maneuvering was done still farther 
south, in North Carolina, at the battles of Whitehall, New- 
bern, and Little Creek. 

It was about this time, September 26, 1862, that nine 
more Cohasset young men, the oldest only thirty, enlisted 
in Company A of the Forty-fifth Regiment. They were 
Charles A. Gross, Richard H. Lincoln, Stephen Lincoln, 
Lyman D. Willcutt, William H. Pratt, Charles A. Vinal, 
Cyrns H. Bates, Elias W. Bourne, and Caleb L. Bates, — 
three more than in Company D of the Thirty-eighth. Be- 
sides these there was James M. Sweeney in Company K of 
this regiment, making ten from Cohasset in the Forty- 
fifth. 

These also, like the Forty-fourth, were pushed into 
North Carolina to trouble the Confederate Army of Vir- 
ginia, Camp was established on the bank of the Trent, 
some two miles from Newbern, from which the Goldsboro 
expedition set forth December 12, 1862. Company A 
was taken out some twelve miles on the railway one night 
on a scouting trip and dumped into a cornfield ; there they 
tried to get a little sleep in the furrows. It rained and 
froze that night, and no wonder some of them took cold. 
In the morning a charge was made upon the enemy, 
and Caleb Bates accidentally injured his ankle in a pile 
of iron rails. His cold settled in the bruise, and his 
leg had to be amputated some time after the war was 
over. 

The regiment won much praise at the battle of Kinston 
and again at Whitehall. Their work having been done, 
they remained encamped near Fort Spinola till June 24, 
1863, returning to Boston on the thirtieth. Stephen 
Lincoln was dying on the way, and here at his home he 
was buried. 



498 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Another nine months' man was George W. Sczva/l, of 
Company G of the Forty-seventh Regiment, who mus- 
tered in November 6, 1862, and was in service at Carroll- 
ton, La. After his discharge in July, 1863, he entered 
the civil service of the government. The last to be men- 
tioned of these short call men in the army is Joseph R. 
Davis, who was our only representative in the light artil- 
lery. It was the Eleventh Battery, engaged upon garrison 
duty about the Potomac. 

In the navy, however, there were a few of the nine 
months' men. Alfred Wliittingtoji Lincobi and Hiratn 




Photo, M. H. H' 



I'Li.A.i.-.:. . l;i,Arii. 
Low tide, looking toward Boston. 



Whittington, both landsmen on board the Montgomery, 
were two of these. Whittington was promoted October 
30, and was in the engagement which took the Confederate 
steamer Caroline. There is one more man required to 
make up the eighteen furnished for the nine months' call, 
and the writer is not sure whether that man was John F. 
Bates, a sailor upon the Vermont, or Robert V. Beal ; for 
both of these enlisted in that month of August. More- 



THE CIVIL WAR. 499 

over, it may have been Samuel H. Hall, a sailor upon the 
Crusader. 

The task of tracing out the records of our brave men 
must be monotonous, but the making of records was in- 
finitely more so. The whole business of the war was 
wearisome and worrisome, and the future looked dark in- 
deed at the beginning of summer, 1863. 

During June Lee's army was sweeping up into Pennsyl- 
vania and no one knew whether our Union forces could 
stop the invasion. The situation was desperate, for no 
decisive break in the Rebellion had yet been accomplished, 
though for more than two years rivers of men and money 
had been poured into the nation's defense. It is true that 
General Grant was at this very time besieging Vicksburg, 
in which the Confederate general, J. C. Pemberton, with 
thirty thousand men, was cooped up ; but no one was sure 
that this western wing of the army could succeed any 
more than the Army of the Potomac had done. 

On the first day of July, 1863, Robert E. Lee's uncon- 
quered army of one hundred and eight thousand men* had 
pressed through every barrier of our Union forces, through 
Virginia up into Maryland, on into Pennsylvania, where 
the whole scattered army of defense was scarcely equal in 
number to the invaders. At this critical moment another 
call for soldiers to defend the country was issued ; not, as 
before, an invitation to noble patriots to volunteer nor even 
to engage in consideration of a bounty of two hundred 
dollars, but by a draft which compelled men to go to the 
front or else to procure substitutes. Several of our men 
living to-day remember paying for their release three hun- 
dred dollars or furnishing substitutes to be shot at. Our 
town mustered twelve men under the draft ; but before 
any men could be sent, the terrible suspense was broken. 
It was done by the battle of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, 
where the head of the Army of Virginia plunged into the 
Army of the Potomac. 

* According to Gen. O. O. Howard's count. 



500 HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 

The billows of battle began to surge on the morning of 
July I ; regiment was dashed against regiment all that day. 
At night there lay about ten thousand men mangled and 
dead upon the ground ; every one of them taken from 
some distant home. The fifty thousand survivors rested a 
little in sleep, and then in the morning with a hundred 
thousand reinforcements they moved into battle array 
against each other. In the afternoon of that hot July day 
at about four o'clock the signal guns of Lee boomed out 
slowly the command to attack our Union forces. 

Some of our Cohasset men remember the awful cannon- 
ade upon the hills that followed, and the infantry charges 
against the Union troops on Little Round Top and the 
Devil's Den and Cemetery Ridge. On into the night the 
fighting continued in different parts of the field, while 
others who had borne the brunt of battle lay exhausted in 
sleep. 

Yet again on the third day the carnage was renewed. 
At about half-past one Lee's signal guns spoke out " one " 
— " two," and both armies sprang to the contest. This 
country had never seen more terrible courage than the Con- 
federates displayed in their determination to plant their 
banners upon our ramparts, but the vigor of Lee's army 
was soon exhausted. Pickett's desperate charge under our 
raking streams of shot was all in vain. His gallant men 
were literally mowed down by our bullets, and then the 
Union regiments sprang upon the field, capturing prisoners 
and trophies of war. That night Lee withdrew with 
twenty-six thousand less men than he brought. Of our 
own soldiers nearly as many had been lost, and the rest 
were too utterly exhausted to pursue the retreating Army 
of Virginia, 

It was a sad Fourth of July, but also a sort of thanks- 
giving day for the North, when President Lincoln an- 
nounced the victory of Gettysburg. But on the same day 
came the news that Grant had choked Vicksburg into sur- 



THE CIVIL WAR. 5OI 

render by his cordon of blue. The backbone of the Re- 
bellion was broken ! While the Confederates still fought 
on in a desperate defense for a couple of years, Lt was in 
defense of a cause already lost. 

From time to time during the remainder of that year 
and the next additional calls for men were issued, to fill 
the places of the dead and of those whose terms of 
enlistment had expired. Several of our Cohasset soldiers 
reenlisted. Gustavus P. Pratt entered as an assistant 
surgeon of the Twenty-ninth Regiment, July 20, 1863, 
and was promoted to surgeon of the Nineteenth Regi- 
ment, November 23, 1864. JoJiii C. Orciitt, of the Twenti- 
eth Regiment, Company A, enlisted first for Boston, then 
afterwards on December 21, 1863, for Cohasset on a 
bounty of 1^325. William H. Bcals likewise received the 
bounty of 1^325, enlisting in Company A of the Twenty- 
fourth Regiment, in which regiment four of our Cohasset 
men had already served. He died at Hingham, December 
20, 1865. 

Four more of our men, three of them but eighteen 
years of age, joined the Fourth Regiment of Cavalry, 
Company A, on December 26, 1863, They served in 
Florida, South Carolina, and at last in Virginia, riding into 
Richmond after the great surrender. Their names TiXQjohn 
F. Bates, John O. Barnes, James Rooiiey,Jr., and Willie F. 
Thayer. 

One soldier who had considerable hard service in Vir- 
ginia, but whose name does not appear upon the Massa- 
chusetts rolls, was David Lyons, who enlisted in the 
Twenty-eighth Regiment, Company F, but was afterwards 
transferred to a New Hampshire regiment. Another who 
was in a branch of the service outside of Massachusetts 
companies was William L. SmitJi, one of the Guards of 
District of Columbia. Dawes S. Nott was an unassigned 
recruit from October 22, 1863, to February 8, 1864, as 
V^^yNXSQ yN2L^ Morris Connor oxi the ^325 bounty. At the 



502 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

same bounty John G. Hayden and Henry G. Putnam were 
mustered into the First Battalion, Company A, Heavy 
Artillery, which had in all twenty of our men. 

Another company of this battalion of heavy artillery, 
Company D, took the six following men at the regular 
bounty in January and February of 1S64: John Barnes^ 
Solomon J. Hayden, Joseph F. Munnice, Thomas Murphy, 
Warren Newcomb,* and Lezvis L. WJieelwright. 

Besides these there were probably men whose names 
are unobtainable, for the selectmen reported ninety-one 
enlistments after the battle of Gettysburg to the end of 
the war. Of these the following were in the naval service, 
in addition to the marines already mentioned : — 

Nichols Pratt had enlisted as acting master's mate 
August 23, 1862, upon the steamer McKnight (.'') ; pro- 
moted acting ensign November 2, 1863, acting master 
April 25, 1865. He was on the blockade for twenty-three 
months, also in the convoy and recovery of the ship Ohio, 
and received a letter from the department for services at 
Fort Fisher. Adna Nichols Bates also was mustered in 
as master's mate. He was in the Canandaigua from July 
12, 1863. John H. Dinsniore was second assistant en- 
gineer in the Saco from December 21, 1862. The Ainslee 
brothers, Peter E. and Henry, both entered the Nyphon 
as sailors December 10, 1863. William L. Baker in 
August, 1863, went upon the Hendrick Hudson as 
master's mate. JoJin Keating was a sailor in the Shenan- 
doah, April, 1863, afterwards serving as fireman in the 
monitor Yuma until June 30, 1866. Joseph W. Litchfield, 
at first a sailor in the Falcony, July 17, 1863, afterwards 
saw some frightful fighting on board the Minnesota. 
Henry Powers from December, 1863, was a sailor in the 
Harvest Moon. Amos Kendall Tilden was in the Pam- 
pero, September, 1863. Abner W. Bates was a sailor in 

* Warren Newcomb was transferred to the navy S.S. Santiago De Cuba, pro- 
moted to captain of gun number two at the battle of Fort Fisher. 



THE CIVIL WAR. 5O3 

the Pequot, August 30, 1863. Robert Lorenzo Cjirtis, a 
sailor in the Flag from December 28, 1862, was discharged 
at the Navy Yard, Philadelphia, February 15, 1865. 
William J. Coiiillard was a sailor in the Antony from 
August 20, 1863, being discharged in August, 1864; he 
reenlisted in November for twelve months. 

The account of marine enlistments ought not to end 
without some reference to the Cohasset men * who were 
engaged under private contract to do wrecking for the 
government near the mouth of the Potomac, Captain 
Loring Bates in 1862 took the schooner Sarah Young 
with the three divers, Israel C. Vinal, Joseph Battles^ 
and Michael Brennock, besides the seamen Levi Creed, 
Lorenzo Bates, Joseph Richardson, Joseph Willcutt, and 
others, going to Fortress Monroe. 

They examined the sunken Cumberland off Newport 
News and reported on her condition. The Whitehall 
also, blown up by the Merrimac, was searched and her 
guns recovered. General Butler's Greyhound at the 
mouth of James River was also raised. For two or three 
years these men were busy for the government saving 
stuff from sunken craft and clearing rudders and doing 
all such marine work. 

But who can tell of all the persons who contributed in 
one way or another to the success of our nation in her 
great struggle } Even the women at hom.e had an im- 
portant work of sending comforts to the soldiers. When 
lint was needed for dressing wounds in the early part of 
the war, a number of our women gathered daily in the 
engine house upon Main Street and there scraped pieces 
of linen with case knives, making bunches of soft fibers 
to send to the hospitals at the front. f Anxieties almost 

* Captain Joseph H. Smith was in the employ of the government, raising 
sunken ships. One of his apparatuses for fastening chains around a submerged 
craft is shown in the historical collection. 

tOne of the Cohasset girls, Helen A. Bates, afterwards Mrs. Brigham, became 
in later years the president of the Massachusetts Department of the Woman's 
Relief Corps, thus continuing the kindly services to our nation's soldiers. 



504 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



as great as the soldiers endured were suffered by those 
who were left at home, waiting to hear the news of each 
battle and fearing lest they might hear of the death of 
some loved one. 

The drain upon the resources of our town to send men 
into the Civil War was a serious one, as we all know. Our 
selectmen reported a list of one hundred and ninety-nine 
men furnished in the army and navy. Twelve of these 
died in the service, one was missing in action, which 
probably means "killed," and ten were dismissed when 
they had become disabled. Besides this expenditure of 
life there were nearly thirty-six thousand dollars which 
the town had to pay in bounties to secure men when the 
war became irksome, and to defray the other necessary 
expenses of the bloody enterprise. 

But gladly and well done is it all, for an unbroken 
nation with ever-expanding power under the principles of 
a free government extending from ocean to ocean is a 
heritage of inestimable value to be transmitted to pos- 
terity. And the Cohasset men wbich we have enumer- 
ated in this chapter have obtained a prestige of undying 
honor because their names are associated for all future 
time with that memorable tragedy the Civil War. 



SOME OF THE PRESENT COHASSET MEMBERS OF THE HENRY 

BRYANT POST 98. G. A. R., WHO SERVED IN THE 

WAR FROM OTHER PLACES. 



Name. 


Service. 


Rank at 
Discharge. 


E. E. Wentworth . 
Otis S Wilbur . . 






7th Maine Infantry, Co. F 
1st Battery, H. A. ... 




Private. 

1st Lieutenant. 


Robert B. Pratt . . 
Thomas D. Blossom 
Samuel P Stoddard 


25th Maine Infantry, Co. E 
32d Massachusetts, Co. E 
i6th Light Battery . . . 




Private. 

ist Sergeant. 

Private. 


Frank A. Field . . 
Joseph E. Butman . 
Charles B. Bridgham 
GeorgeE. W. Ida . 
Roscoe G. Lopaus . 


45th Massachusetts, Co. A 
13th Massachusetts, Co. I 
54th Massachusetts . 




Private. 
Corporal. 
As6t. Surgeon. 


United States Navy, 
ist Maine, H. A., Co. G. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



UP TO DATE. 



THE work of this chapter is to spin out a few of the 
unfinished threads of our narrative and to bring 
them together at the close. 

Taking up the story of the churches at the point where 
it was interrupted, the year 1825, it may be followed 
down to the present year. The original parish was 
divided, as we saw, by the planting of a Methodist 
Church * in Jerusalem, and of a new Congregational 
Church in the center of the town where it now stands. 
With these three bodies of worshipers, the town continued 
its religious life for about thirty-seven years before a 
fourth congregation was organized. During those thirty- 
seven years the old town-church was forced to readjust 
itself to several serious changes. The general lack of 



*THE LIST OF MINISTERS IN THE METHODIST CHURCH OF 
COHASGET. 



1818-22. 


E. Taylor. 


1864-65. 


Franklin Gavitt. 


1823-29. 


Stephen Puffer. 


1866-67. 


John N. Collier. 


1830. 


William Ramsdell. 


1868. 


Philip Crandon. 


I83I. 


Asa U. Swinerton. 


1869-71. 


John B. Husted. 


1832-36. 


Stephen Puffer. 


1872-73. 


F. D. Goodrich. 


1838. 


J. Mudge. 


1874-76. 


James O. Thompson, 


1839-46. 


Stephen Puffer. 


1877-79. 


Silas Sprowl. 


1847. 


Onesiphorus Robbins. 


1880-81. 


Francis D. Sargent. 


1848-49. 


George K. Winchester. 


1882-83. 


Angelo Canoll. 


1850-51. 


Daniel Webb. 


1884. 


James Mather. 


1852-53- 


John D. King. 


1885-86. 


John H. Allen. 


1854. 


Lavvton Cady. 


1887-89. 


D. L. Brown. 


1855-56. 


Oliver P. Farrington. 


1890-91. 


J. H. MacDonald. 


1857-58. 


Thomas Spilsted. 


1892-93. 


Charles Smith. 


1859-60. 


Lemuel Harlow. 


1894. 


Elijah Smith. 


I86I. 


George S. Alexander. 


1895-97. 


Rennetts C. Miller. 


1862-63. 


Benjamin L. Sayer. 


1898. 


John N. Geisler. 



5o6 



HISTORY OF COM ASSET. 



faithfulness to it before the two new parishes were split 
off had been hard enough to endure, but when a con- 
siderable number from the most devout members of the 
first parish transferred their allegiance to the new ones, 
the loss was irreparable. 

Moreover, the State laws passed at various times had 
removed the church taxes so that those who preferred to 
support no church, as well as those who preferred a dif- 
ferent church, were free to neglect the old one. Those 
who remained loyal had to increase their voluntary con- 
tributions to make up for these losses. 

But there is no evidence that their losses diminished 
the number of worshipers in the old church. 

The number admitted into full communion during the 
nine years 1825-34 was thirty-five, nearly equal to the 
number during the preceding period of nine years. 
When to this thirty-five we add the seventy-three mem- 
bers which were admitted into full communion in the new 
Congregational Church during the same nine years 1825- 
34, it becomes evident that the religious interest of the 
town was much increased by the rupture in the old 
parish.* 

Measuring also by the standard of money contributed, 
the religious efforts of the town were much increased; 
for while the salary of the old parish was not diminished 
but rather increased, that of the new one upon the plain 
soon grew to be six hundred dollars a year in addition. 
This, moreover, leaves out of the count the financial sup- 

* A LIST OF PASTORS OF THE FIRST PARISH (UNITARIAN) 
CHURCH. 

Rev. Nehemiah Hobart, December 13, 1721-May 31, 1740. 

John Fowle, December 31, 1741 1746. 

John Brown, September 2, 1747-October 22, 1791. 

Josiah C. Shaw, October 3, 1792-June 3, 1796. 

Jacob Flint, January 10, 1798-October, 1835. 

Harrison G. O. Phipps, November 18, 1835-December, 1841. 

Joseph Osgood, D.D., October 26, 1842-August 2, 1898. 

WiHiam R. Cole, December 9, 1896- 



UP TO DATE. 



D^/ 



port of the Methodist Church at Jerusalem which came 
partly from Cohasset. The population and wealth of the 
town was not increasing half as rapidly as its religious 
efforts during the twenty-five years following the 
divorce. 

The services of the Sabbath were morning and after- 
noon, with an intermission of one or two hours, while the 
Second Church * held a Sabbath-school and a prayer-meet- 
ing in addition. A wood-burning stove had been placed 
in the old meeting-house for the first time in 1822, Febru- 
ary 3,t and the new church from its beginning possessed 
this modern convenience. 

Foot stoves also were needed to soften the temperature 
where the feeble stove could not penetrate. The instru- 
mental music afforded was made upon bass viols and 
violins until after 1850, when pipe organs were installed, 
first in the old church, then, 1857, in the new one. 

The general requirements of the service for public wor- 
ship increased as culture and "creature comforts " became 
better regarded. One of the phenomena of this develop- 
ment was the growing unwillingness to travel far in order 
to attend service. The dwellers in Beechwood, three 
miles away, sent only a handful of attendants to the two 
churches upon the plain, while some others were cultivat- 
ing Sunday habits of a sort that injures any community. 
As early as the year 1859 several persons commenced 



*A LIST OF PASTORS OF THE SECOND P.ARISH 
(CONGREGATIONAL). 



Rev. Aaron Pickett, 
Martin Moore, 
Daniel Babcock, 
Frederick A. Reed, 
Calvin R. Fitts, 
Moody A. Stevens, 
Granville Yager, 
John W. Savage, 
E. Victor Bigelow, 

t See Joel Willcutt's diary. 



November 15, 1826-May 7, 1833. 
September 4, 1833-August, 1841. 
June 9, 1842-June g, 1847. 
March 9, 1848-March 13, 1866. 
April, 1868-October 12, 1870. 
April 18, 1871-June 20, 1878. 
June 20, 1878-February 6, 1883. 
December 30, 1883-November, 1890. 
September 24, 1891- 



5o8 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



to advocate the establishment of a church in Beech- 
wood.* 

Those families which had been in the habit of walking 
six miles each Sabbath in order to attend church could be 
relied upon to form the nucleus of an organization within 
their own neighborhood. 

Religious services had been held occasionally in the 
schoolhouse, with preaching by Rev. Joseph Osgood, Rev. 
Frederick A. Reed, and Rev. Stephen Puffer, of the Cohas- 




Photo, Harriet A. Nickerson. 

Beechwood Congregational Church. 
Built 1866. 



set churches, and by others. Rev. E. P. Dyer, of Hing- 
ham, was particularly influential in securing a permanent 

*A LIST OF PASTORS OF THE BEECHWOOD CONGREGATIONAL 





CHURCH. 






Rev. Cyrus R. Stone, 


1862-67. 


Rev. 


Nelson M. Bailey, 


1889-92. 


„ Charles B. Smith, 


1867-72. 


,, 


John Sharp, 


1892-95. 


„ T. S. Norton, 


1873-75. 


Mr. 


George J. Newton, 


1895-96 


„ Austin S. Garver, 


1875- 


Rev 


John Wriston, 


1896-98 


„ E. C. Hood, 


1875-83. 


„ 


Frank Park, 


1898- 


„ Harlan Page, 


1883-88. 









UP TO DATE. 509 

church organization, and a committee of three * to solicit 
support for regular preaching services was appointed. 

Rev. Cyrus Stone, a retired foreign missionary, held 
preaching services there in the year 1862, and within 
eighteen months there were twelve persons who formed 
themselves into the Evangelical Union Church. 

Deacon Damon and Mrs. Samuel Litchfield and others 
of Scituate aided in the matter, regardless of both town 
and denominational boundaries. The Pratt brothers, John 
and Aaron, gave the land to hold the proposed meeting- 
house. 

Citizens in the central village were appealed to, and a 
fair which had been held in Beechwood was repeated 
in the town hall to raise money for building. It re- 
ceived a liberal patronage from all the inhabitants of the 
town. 

In the year 1866, after our soldiers had returned from 
the Civil War, the building of the Beechwood Congrega- 
tional Church was undertaken, and it was finished at a 
cost of over five thousand dollars, about half of it being 
paid by citizens of our town. As a moral and social 
factor in the community where it has been placed, this 
meeting-house with its devoted attendants has been for 
thirty-two years an important institution. 

The fifth religious organization to claim the support of 
our people and to call forth their spiritual energies was 
the Roman Catholic Church. The building called " St. 
Anthony's Church," which now stands upon the old 
Jacob's Meadow, South Main Street, was begun in the 
year 1875. But for about thirteen years before this build- 
ing was undertaken, services of the Roman Catholic 
faith were held in the Brennock home at the Cove and 
at other "stations." The need of this additional institu- 
tion of worship has been already intimated, for the com- 
ing of a score or more of Portuguese to engage in our 

* Moses V. Wallace, Silas Bates, and Henry Damon. 



5IO 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



fisheries before the year 1850, as well as a number of 
Irish immigrants of that period, made such a church 
necessary. 

Rev. Hugh P. Smith,* of Roxbury, who then had the 
oversight of these Roman Catholic newcomers in Wey- 
mouth, Hingham, Cohasset, and Scituate, soon saw the 
necessity of a building for public worship, and with char- 
acteristic energy he set about it. From the time of its 
completion in 1876, St. Anthony's Church has called an 
increasing number of worshipers, until now there are as 




Photo, Harriet A. Nickersnn. 

St. Anthony's Church (Roman Catholic). 
Built 1876. 

high as five hundred at some services. During the sum- 
mer months especially, when the visitors from city homes 
bring more than a hundred domestic servants to our town, 

* ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIESTS AT COHASSET. 
Rev. Hugh P. Smith and others, i86o(?)-76. 
Peter J. Leddy, 1876-80. 

Gerald Fagin, 1880-84. 

Ignatius P. Egan, 1884-97. 

Charles F. Cowen, 1897-98. 

William McDonough, 1898- 



UP TO DA TE. 511 

the Roman Catholic Church fills a large function of the 
town life. 

The last Christian denomination to get established 
within our borders is the Protestant Episcopal Church. 
Many of the summer residents in Cohasset, being Episco- 
palians, had been compelled to drive to the Hingham 
Episcopal Church or to attend the churches of other 
denominations here, or else to attend no service. 

Chapel services were instituted as early as 1894 in the 
little Grand Army Hall upon the ledge near the center of 
the village. Two years later, 1896, June 8, at a meeting 
of twenty-one members, a parish was organized with Rev. 
J. B. Thomas as rector, called the St. Stephen's Parish. 
No building has yet been erected for the use of this 
church, and we see the organization in those same early 
stages of development which have been successively out- 
grown by the Unitarian, the Methodist, the Congrega- 
tional, the Beechwood, and the Catholic churches. 

With six churches established in a town of only twenty- 
four hundred persons, one might question whether we are 
not over-established. But they are all self-supporting with 
the exception of the Beechwood church, and that is in a 
community so distant from other places of worship that 
to aid in its support is a necessary benevolence of the 
denomination to which it belongs. It is true that this 
self-support of the other five churches depends to a con- 
siderable extent upon the summer residents ; but many of 
these are legal citizens of the town and others live here 
so large a part of the year as to make these churches 
almost their own church homes. 

There is a third Congregational Church which is sup- 
ported partially by residents of this town, called the 
Bethany Church, of Nantasket. This church was organ- 
ized in 1891, and meets in a hall that stands upon the 
Hingham side of Hull Street. It cannot be claimed there- 
fore as belonging to our town, though much of its support 
comes from our citizens. 



5 I 2 HISTORY OF CO //ASSET. 

One sometimes hears it said that our forefathers were 
more faithful to the church than we of an irreverent age ; 
but these more than six churches for a population of 
twenty-four hundred have some things to say in refutation 
of that charge. So far as money can measure devotion 
the present expenditure of more than seven thousand dol- 
lars a year for our churches refutes that charge, for it is 
more than ten times what was paid a century and a half 
ago, while our population is not three times greater than 
it was then. Moreover, while the cost of manual labor 
has multiplied only three times, the salary of a minister 
has multiplied four times. 

The attendance upon meetings for public worship shows 
a similar gain. The whole number of worshipers in the 
town who gathered in their church each Sabbath in the 
year 1747 when it was built upon the Common failed to 
fill it by a large lack. A number of extra pews have been 
put in since then ; indeed, the church was built much too 
large, for the people looked for an increase in population, 
and it was to be used also for town meetings and for ex- 
ceptionally large gatherings. 

There is every reason to believe that less than two hun- 
dred people constituted a large congregation in those 
days. That would be crediting them with about twice the 
present day attendance in that same meeting-house; but 
when we count the whole church attendance upon the 
main Sabbath service in our town to-day, we find that it 
amounts to eight hundred.* The population is only three 
times what it was a hundred and fifty years ago, while 
church attendance is four times what it then was. More- 
over, this gain is still further to be estimated, for we have 
nowadays several additional services, such as Sunday- 
schools, young people's meetings, prayer-meetings, wom- 
en's meetings, and others, in all of the six churches, 

* This is by actual count fbr several Sundays in the spring of 1898 before the 
summer residents had come. 



UP TO DA TE. 5 I 3 

which enlarge very much the extent of our religious 
activities. 

But none of these gains in religious life have been made 
by the town acting as a municipality ; they have been 
secured through the efforts of private individuals and 
groups of individuals. 

On the other hand, our public schools are known to be 
in their up-to-date development a function of the town's 
administration. 

We quitted the narrative of our schools at the year 184O, 
when they had got established firmly in the three divisions 
of primary, grammar, and high. For ten years the high 
school was fostered only during the four winter months; 
but in 185 1 it began its career for the full school session 
of a year. After the removal of the old academy * in 
1857, in which the feeble infancy of the high school was 
spent, the present town hall was built the same year, with 
rooms for the high school in the lower story. Here it 
flourished for thirty-four years, when in 1891 it was trans- 
ferred into the new Osgood School. 

Of primary schools there were five in the town by the 
year 1880, and there were four grammar schools with two 
mixed and one intermediate. These were all con- 
ducted in the old methods intimated in a previous 
chapter, but the time for a great change came about ten 
years ago. 

As early as 1885 the old system of pulverized school 
administration was condemned by some of the more pro- 
gressive citizens who desired to see instruction bettered 
by bringing a large number of pupils into one building 
where a half-dozen teachers might be used with greater 
efficiency. There were eight schools then kept in five 
different houses in the central village of the town. The 
buildings were crude things, in great need of repairs, with 
no ventilation but their drafty windows and doors, no 

* It was moved over to Beach Street and changed into a dwelling house. 



5 1 4 HIS rOR V OF COHASSE T. 

modern sanitary conveniences, and no proper method of 
heating them. 

The whole number of pupils in attendance at these 
eight schools was two hundred and forty during the year 
1885 ; and these two hundred and forty were fairly well 
graded for the first time in the history of our schools. Rev. 
Joseph Osgood, chairman of the committee, had been try- 
ing to bring this to pass during a half-century of service 
in connection with the schools, but for a hundred and fifty 
years, scholars had been allowed to enter wherever a guess 
at their ability * might assign them. They had hopped 
over classes or had plodded through them according to no 
fixed standard. Now in 1885 a four years' course was 
required of primary pupils, three years for the grammar 
^school course, and four years for the high school. 

For the first time " winter scholars " were debarred 
from the high school. Four of these boys, such as always 
spent only the few winter months in haphazard studies, 
applied for admission ; but they were not fitted for any 
one of the classes, and the old custom of teaching "any- 
body at anything " was dead. But it was difficult to keep 
the four primary and the three grammar schools uniform 
in their studies, for the graded system was new, and 
teachers needed grading as well as pupils. One of the 
difficulties was in the matter of discipline. All teachers 
about the center of the town, except the principal of the 
high school, were women at that time, and when a refrac- 
tory pupil needed a man's muscle to bring him into decent 
behavior, there was none to be had in these separated 
schools. 

The idea of having the schools brought into one prop- 
erly constructed building, well heated, ventilated, plumbed, 
and all under the control of one man, was cherished for 
several years. Finally, in 1887, a majority of the school 

* In fact, promotions were frequently made into the high school, not for ability, 
but because the age of thirteen years had been reached. 



UP TO DA TE. 5 I 5 

committee urged upon the town the need of a large cen- 
tral building and the abandonment of the old ones. Ed- 
ward F. Ripley, E. Pomeroy Collier, Joseph S. Bigelow, 
Grenville D. Braman, and Herbert O. Beale of the com- 
mittee signed the report, which contained the following 
paragraphs : — 

We would this year call the attention of our townspeople to 
the advantages of a large central school building, containing the 
North Grammar and Primary, Center Grammar and Primary, South 
Grammar and Primary, and the Harbor and Elm Street schools. 
Provision must be made before another year for our high school, 
which will have more pupils in 1889 than it can possibly accom- 
modate. The Center, Elm Street, Harbor, and North primary 
schools barely accommodate this year's pupils. In some in- 
stances, in years past, we are told that owing to the crowded con- 
dition of certain primary schools some of the pupils had to be ad- 
vanced to the grammar schools one year before they were qualified 
to enter, thus completely disarranging our whole plan for grading 
the schools. 

Now we claim that our North, South, Center, and Harbor school 
property could be disposed of for a good round sum, especially 
the North, which is a valuable piece of property for building, be- 
ing situated at the junction of the Jerusalem Road, and that a 
building of ten rooms could be built, designed according to the 
latest and best ideas in schoolhouse construction, with perfect 
ventilation, comfortably and economically heated by furnace or 
steam heat, an ornament to the town, and, best of all, a school 
where scholars could be perfectly graded, and where all the teach- 
ers and scholars would be under the direct supervision of one 
man. 

But an enterprise so big had never yet been undertaken 
by the town. All sorts of objections were raised ; children 
would have to be conveyed in barges, costing more money. 
Large and small children gathered in such a crowd on 
one playground seemed perilous to some parents. The call 
for ventilation and other modern sanitary improvements 



5l6 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

seemed to some conservative citizens absurd, since the 
town had thrived with very good health in the old primi- 
tive schoolhouses for many generations. 

Furthermore, the expense of the new proposal was a big 
item. The advocates tried to whittle down this fact by 
promising a less expense for running the central building. 
Only one janitor and one fire would be required, and the 
committee promised various other trifling advantages which 
proved afterwards to be false anticipations. The advocates 
also urged the gain of money by selling the old properties, 
so that the net cost of the new building they said would 
be but eight thousand dollars. They traveled to Beech- 
wood and to Jerusalem, and held mass meetings whenever 
they could, trying to gain votes by every argument, sound 
or otherwise. 

At last the town voted at its March meeting in 1890 to 
buy a suitable lot of land and to build a central school- 
house costing twenty thousand dollars, according to the 
plans drawn by Edward Nichols, who had been formerly a 
Cohasset schoolboy. Instead of eight thousand dollars as 
first represented, a debt of twenty thousand was thus re- 
quired. 

To impart to a new generation the flavor of the bitter 
opposition endured by the committee who advocated this 
new and costly enterprise would be impossible. Folly 
was the least of the charges hufled at them. Many par- 
ents threatened to boycott the new building by keeping 
their children at home, or at least in the little old school- 
houses. The prophecy was freely made that the building 
would be empty in a short time and thus its uselessness 
would be proved. To aggravate the case, when the cellar 
had been dug, the estimates for the building were so much 
larger than anticipated that twelve thousand dollars more 
were called for. The request was refused at a special 
town meeting August i, 1890, but the committee pro- 
ceeded with the work, and the money had to be voted. 



UP TO DATE. 



517 



Therefore, at the next March meeting, nine thousand of 
the twelve were doled out. The other three thousand and 
more had to come later to pay the last bills, so that the 
total amount spent by the town was more than thirty-two 
thousand dollars. 

To this cost the value of the land upon which the build- 
ing stands should be added, though this was a gift from 
some friends* of Rev. Joseph Osgood, made upon con- 
dition that the school be named after him, in recognition 




Osgood School, Elm Street. 
Built 1890. 



Photo, M. H. Eeamy. 



of his half-century of faithful work in behalf of the town 
schools. 

Thirty-two thousand dollars seemed a large expense for 
a public schoolhouse ; and then it was discovered, of course, 
that the cost of running it was more instead of less than 
that of the old system. The indignation of conservative 

* Charles S. Bates was the principal benefactor. 



5 I 8 HIS TOR Y OF COHA SSE T. 

citizens was frequently exhibited when they would point 
out the beautiful building to strangers as "Town's Folly " ; 
but its success has been so much more than its friends an- 
ticipated that instead of being empty, it is so crowded that 
an enlargement of it or an additional building upon the 
same lot must be undertaken. 

The children who grow up under its advantages need no 
words of apology to justify to their minds the existence of 
the Osgood School. People who look upon the event from 
the outside wonder why so much opposition should have 
come from men whose taxes are so insignificant and whose 
children receive so many obvious advantages from the 
school. The trouble was mainly that it was a step so far 
in advance of the times ; but now that several more towns 
of the State have adopted the same system its value seems 
more readily confessed. The expense of conveying pupils 
is large ; but some conveying to the high school had been 
done before the Osgood School was established, so that the 
principle of the work had only to be extended. 

Provincialism is now being abolished by bringing all 
sections of the town together under a variety of instruc- 
tion, so that it is no longer possible to tell in what part of 
the town any children live by the peculiarity of their 
speech. The advantages of this sort, which really vindi- 
cate the town's expenditure, would not have been a potent 
argument in appealing at first for a school ; but steadily 
the work of improved instruction is being wrought into 
the fiber of the community, and the day will come when 
those who labored under great abuse without compensa- 
tion to advance our public schools shall receive their well- 
deserved praise. 

Next to the schools as an educator should be mentioned 
the town library. 

This institution had for its forerunner two semi-public 
libraries, the Social Library and the Washington Library. 
The Washington Library was legally organized in the year 



UP TO DATE. 



519 



1832, but probably existed for two years before that. The 
trustees in 1832 were five women,* who hoped to increase 
the amount of good reading in the town. Seventeen dol- 
lars' worth of books were purchased and loaned out under 
a set of library rules, one of which declared that " any 
proprietor suffering a book to be carried to any school 
shall forfeit the value of his or her share." 

Only the proprietors could draw books. In 1834 the 
purchasing committee consisted of Thomas Tower, Levi N. 
Bates, and W. E. Doane, and the number of books at that 
time was somewhat over a hundred. As more books were 
needed, assessments of twelve and one half cents or 
twenty-five cents per member were levied. 

In about twelve years from its founding, this Washing- 
ton Library gave up its life to be merged into its rival the 
Social Library. The record of this fact reads as follows : — 

CoHASSET, January 15, 1844. 
Agreeably to previous notice the proprietors of the Washington 
Library met at the store of L. N. Bates. The meeting being 
called to order, George W. Stoddard was chosen moderator. It 
was then voted that the Library with all its rights and titles be 
transferred to the members of the old Social Library, on condi- 
tion that each member of the Washington Library be entitled to 
as many shares in said Social Library as he or she held in the 
Washington. 

LEVI N. BATES, Sec. 

One of the prejudices which these early organizations 
suffered was that against novel reading. There were 
many conservative persons who hated fiction very cor- 
dially, because, in the first place, a narrative which was 
false in the facts narrated seemed to insult one's whole 
capacity for truth ; and in the second place, it was an 
unwarrantable indulgence of idle fancies to read for the 
pleasure of it. Better be doing housework or fishing or 

* Sarah Collier, Deborali N. Bates, Jane Endicott, jane Snow, Ophelia Whit- 
tington. 



520 



HISTORY OF C OH ASSET. 



farming. They could not appreciate the culture of mind 
that comes from following the dramas of life which a 
novelist may depict for brains not so active as his own. 

The discussion of the value or harm of novel reading 
was rife for many years, and the Social Debating Society 
had the question up for ventilation. 

This debating society, by the way, was a feature of 
town life for at least ten or twelve years. It was made up 
of about twenty-five active participants, though from its 
beginning in 1828 it had at one time and another as many 
as one hundred and five members.* 

Their debates covered themes of religion, natural 
science, politics, literature, matrimony, and town affairs. 
In fact, nothing was too sacred or too difficult for them. 
Another debating society was thriving in Beechwood and 
two or more in Scituate during those days of Daniel 
Webster oratory. 

The debating society in Beechwood was formed in Janu- 
ary, 1840, under the inspiration of William Mayo, a public 
school teacher, with about forty f members from the men 
and boys of that neighborhood. They called themselves 
the Beechwood Album Society and debated such questions 
as the following: — 

*The first twenty-six names signed to the constitution are as follows, between 
eighteen and forty-five years of age : — 

Henry J. Turner. George Beal. Edward Tower. 

Samuel Pratt, Jr. Dawes Studley. Zealous Bates, 

Caleb Nichols. Josiah O. Lawrence. James Pratt. 

Martin Lincoln. D. T. Lothrop. Warren Willcutt. 

Nichols Pratt. Lewis Willcutt. Micajah Malbon. 

Caleb Lothrop. Horace Hancock. Sylvanus Brown. 

George A. Lawrence. James Stoddard, Jr. George W. Collier. 

Job Tower. David B. Tower. Jonathan B. Bates. 

Joseph Lincoln. Alfred Whittington. 

tThe first ten names on the list of thirty-eight are as follows : — 
William Mayo. Thomas Whitcomb. Minot Pratt. 

Alvah Richardson. Timothy W. Brown. Warren Bates. 

E. C. Upton. Lot W. Pratt. John Pratt, 2d. 

Osborne Wood. 



UP TO DA TE. 521 

" Which is conducive of the most happiness, the married or 
single state?" 

"Which takes the most comfort, the miser or the spendthrift?" 

It was not possible in those days for men to buy daily 
papers for a penny or two, in which an army of news 
gatherers presented the world's affairs and sufficient dis- 
cussions upon them ; therefore this custom of a town 
debating society, which is now almost obsolete in our 
nation, was a necessity. 

But to return to the library. The day came when the 
town itself, instead of a private club, was persuaded to 
furnish a treasury of reading matter for its inhabitants. 
For about thirty years the old Social Library had fallen 
into disuse, when in the year 1878 the superintendent of 
schools. Rev. Joseph Osgood, incorporated in his annual 
report a strong plea for a town library. The State 
Legislature had already passed acts authorizing towns to 
undertake this public function, and our town meeting 
appointed the following five men to canvas the matter : 
Rev. Joseph Osgood, Edward E. Tower, Levi N. Bates, 
Philander Bates, and John Warren Bates. 

It was clear that not over one tenth of the people in 
town would avail themselves of the reading matter in a 
public library, and it seemed necessary to rely therefore 
partly upon private enthusiasm for the support of such an 
institution. The next year three hundred dollars were 
appropriated on condition that an equal sum be raised by 
private subscription. Nine trustees * were appointed to 
administer the affairs of the Cohasset Free Public 
Library. 

The place provided for the library at first was a part of 
the lower floor of the town hall next to the schoolroom, 

*FOR ONE YEAR. FOR TWO YEARS. FOR THREE YEARS. 

ReV. Joseph Osgood. Rev. Granville Yager. E. Pomeroy Collier. 

John Warren Bates. Lot Webster Bates. Mrs. Fannie H. Tower. 

Mary Lewis. Sarah S. Pratt. Abbie N. Bates. 



522 



HISTORY OF CO H ASSET. 



the part now used for the library anteroom ; but the 
trustees hoped that some day benevolent persons might 
provide a suitable building which would be a monument 
for the town. 

That hope* still lures on the friends of the library, 
and in the mean time the town has enlarged the library to 
take the place of the school which moved out of that part 
of the town hall in 1891. 

The regular appropriations at first were $200 or $300 
each year to pay the salary of the librarian and to add 
new books. In three years from its beginning there were 
772 who had come to borrow books from the three thou- 
sand volumes to which the library had grown by purchase 
and by private donation. 

Since that time the sober progress of an established 
institution has characterized the library. A few bequests f 
of public-spirited individuals have added to the stock of 
books, but the future is still to reveal some one who will 
secure for the town a more appropriate building for this 
necessary adjunct of public education. 

Passing from the consideration of these fountains of 
learning to other fountains of a less metaphorical mean- 
ing, some account must be given of the town's water 
supply. 

Several natural springs have always slaked the thirst of 
sojourners in Cohasset, the most famous of which are 
probably the two Cold Springs, one on Jerusalem Road 
next to the sea, near the Kendall estate, where the old 
Cold Spring House was built, the other at the edge of 
Jacob's Meadow, west of Spring Lane, near the railroad. 

As for wells, a little digging almost anywhere in town 
will tap a good supply of water. The reason for this is 

♦The wills of the late Harriot E. Pratt and of her sister, Sarah S. Pratt, recently 
probated, provide a legacy of sufficient amount to erect a suitable building for a 
library in honor of their father, Paul Pratt. 

tOn January i, 1898, a legacy of three hundred dollars from Miss Marion 
Cheever, who perished in the surf on Sandy Beach, was given to the library. 



UP TO DATE. 523 

that the great glacier left a coating of clay and gravel 
upon our granite just sufficient to hold the rains that 
soak in, and not deep enough to drop the water below the 
reach of a pump. The glacial deposits in some places of 
North America were so deep that the water may seep 
through for several hundred feet before reaching bed rock. 
The writer has seen a well in the city of Seattle, on Puget 
Sound, dug for more than two hundred feet through sand 
and clay deposited by the glacier, and even at that depth 
the bottom would not hold water. 

The old-fashioned well sweep has always been able to 
reach the water in Cohasset wells, and pumps have never 
found a case where the water has been beyond their 
reach of thirty feet. 

The old pump, which stands at the junction of Elm 
and Main Streets in the center of the town, is one of many 
that have kept man and beast supplied. Generations of 
neighbors have used it, fishing schooners of bygone days 
had their casks of fresh water filled from its depths, and 
school children have squeaked more than one pump handle 
to death above it. Speaking of school children reminds 
us that the schoolhouses of old were usually placed upon 
some rocky ledge which could be used for nothing else, 
and consequently no wells could be furnished the thirsty 
children except some kindly neighbor's or some street 
pump like the one mentioned. 

But the time of modern convenience in water works 
came to us after nearly two centuries of primitive wells. 
It was brought about chiefly by Charles S. Bates, whose 
great-grandfather, Samuel Bates, in the same spirit of solid 
enterprise, established the first wharf at our harbor. The 
enterprise of a public water system in Cohasset could not 
promise any financial gain to the projectors, and Mr. 
Bates, in his appeal to private citizens to undertake it, 
placed the whole matter upon the high plane of public 
benefaction and town improvement. 



524 ^IS TORY OF coil A SSE T. 

A plant costing sixty thousand dollars was necessary, 
so that there was plenty of room for the investments of 
public-spirited men. At last, on April 26, 1886, the first 
meeting of the Cohasset Water Company was held.* 

These men were convmced that by driving a series of 
tube wells in the meadow called the Picle, a sufficient sup- 
ply of water could be pumped by an engine into a reservoir 
upon the top of Bear Hill, whence it could be conducted 
in pipes to about nine tenths of the homes of the town. 

Furthermore, the force of this water at any of the lower 
parts of the town would be so great that a stream could 
be thrown upon the roof of any house, and thus a fire pro- 
tection of incalculable value would be afforded. The old 
fire engine had many times been called to extinguish 
burnings, where the water of mud puddles and wells and 
brooks, so soon exhausted, left its pump a helpless thing in 
the hands of disappointed firemen. f The old bucket 

* The following were present at the first meeting of the Cohasset Water Com- 
pany : — 

Chas. A. Welch. Z. T. HoUingsworth. 

Chas. S. Bates. B. C. Clark. 

Waldo Higginson. J. S. Bigelow. 

Jas. H. Bouve. A. H. Tower. 

Chas. F. Tilden. W. C. Burrage. 

Chas. A. Gross. Geo. K. Nickerson. 

Ezekiel B. Studley. W. G. Cutter, 

t The origin of the first fire engine company may be seen by the following peti- 
tion, April 30, 1807, which was discovered some years ago by W. J. Brennock in 
the attic of the town hall, and is now framed as a precious document in posses- 
sion of the Zaccheus Rich Hose Company, Number One. 

The front wheels of the old engine and two of the buckets are also owned by the 
Hose Company. The method of working the old pump was by filling its huge tub 
with the buckets of water carried from the nearest supply, and then pumping from 
the tub a heavy stream upon the fire. Members of the engine company were 
exempted from militia service and from the payment of poll taxes. 

April 30th 1807. 
To the Selectmen of the Town of Cohasset. 

Gentlemen, — You are requested to insert the following article in the warrant for 
May meeting, viz. : — 

To see if the Town will Accept of a Fire Engine, with Bucketts &c Compleat 
According to Law, to be procured and paid for, by Mr Elisha Doane jr, Mr Nich- 
ols Tower, Mr John Nichols, Mr Joseph Lincoln, Mr Wm Whittington, and such 



UP TO DA TE. 525 

brigade, which for many generations had lined up between 
a burning building and a well to pass the water to the 
flames, was promised an everlasting rest wherever the 
water pipes might furnish a hydrant in the streets for the 
hose that would send a drenching stream. 

All these and many other promises of convenience have 
been realized. The Cohasset Water Company, with a 
capital stock of $100,000, half issued, has undertaken and 
has succeeded in supplying some of the best drinking 
water of the State. The wells driven into the meadow 
are iron tubes two and a half inches in diameter, with the 
lower end pointed and perforated with enough holes to 
allow the water to flow in rapidly. Fifty-four of these 
pipes were all connected at the top with mains that run to 
the center and thence to the pump, as the accompanying 
diagram will show. The steam pump sucks up the water 
from all and forces it into a large main that runs up to the 
top of Bear Hill, where a reservoir seventeen feet deep, 
holding one and a half million gallons, has been dug in the 
top of that hard clay drumlin. This large main is tapped 
at a place before it reaches the reservoir by the mains that 
lead through all our streets and supply our homes.* It 
thus happens that the water flows up and down through 
the same pipe, and when there is scarcely enough to fill 
the service pipes and to pass on up into the reservoir, as 

others as may Joyn them, to the number the Law allowes and to be Compleated 
aggreeable to Law in the Course of Nine Months; with this proviso, that if the 
selectmen should at any time hereafter appoint Engine men, to the exclusion of the 
present applicants, or any of their Associates or Assigns then the Town shall reim- 
burse to those who they may exclude, all expences they may have been at. 

THADDEUS LAWRENCE JAMES STODDARD 
ELISHA DOANE ABEL KENT Junior 

WILLIAM STUTSON LABAN BATES 

ISRAEL NICHOLS JOEL WILLCUTT 

*The number of services furnished by the Cohasset Water Company is 307. 
Some of these being stables, the whole number of homes supplied is about 280. 
There are also forty hydrants at convenient intervals upon our streets, as a fire 
protection, paid for by the town. The care of the whole system has been from the 
beginning in the hands of Daniel N. Tower. 



526 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



was the case in the dry summer of 1896, the throb of the 
force pump may be detected at all our faucets.* 




♦Seven more wells have been driven in James Meadow, furnishing ample supply, 
but the whole drainage region cannot furnish over 100,000 gallons per day in a dry 
season. 



UP TO DATE. 527 

The kind of water thus obtained stands a very high test 
under the State Board of Health. The monthly analysis 
is fairly represented by the following for April, 1896: Dis- 
tinct turbidity, slight sediment, color .10 (about one tenth 
that of Boston water for six years' average), odor none 
(either cold or hot), residue on evaporation twIw' fi'ee 
ammonia none, albuminoid ttouoo. chlorine tttWoo. nitro- 
gen TtVoW. oxygen consumed f^^^V hardness Z.T, iron 

^.0_7 

105000- . , 

In this analysis the presence of chlorme mdicates that 
a little salt from our sea air has got deposited in our hill- 
sides and meadows where the water that soaks into the 
ground carries it along into our wells. However, the 
amount is hardly worth speaking of, for according to this 
analysis it takes more than three tons of our water to 
furnish less than two ounces of chlorine. The unusual 
amount of iron held in solution adds to the hardness of 
the water, but this is unavoidable where the granite rock 
and clay furnish so much of this metal. 

An inspection of the names of those who attended the 
first meeting of the Cohasset Water Company shows sev- 
eral of the summer residents whose interest in the town 
has grown out of its attractiveness to them as a summer 
resort. Moreover, this public convenience has made it 
possible for a number of summer homes to be built upon 
the ledges along our shore where no wells could be dug, 
except by a rock boring such as G. T. W. Braman's upon 
Jerusalem Road, and thus still more summer residences 
have been made available. 

Many persons who have built along our shore in these 
later years were first drawn here by the pleasures of a sum- 
mer visit. For more than seventy-five years this custom 
of summering at Cohasset has been developing. Board- 
ing places like the Black Rock, Kimball's Hotel, the War- 
ren Bates House, the Lothrop House, and others have 
been filled for many years by visitors. 



52! 



HISTORY OF COHASSET. 



Perhaps the most distinguished was Daniel Webster, 
who used to enjoy cooting and fishing off the Cohasset 
rocks. A memorial of him has been carved by nature 
in one of the granite rocks of our shore in easy view of 
which he often must have passed, without realizing the 
remarkable resemblance between the outline of the rock 
and the profile of his own face. 





■ y- '■• p; 





Photo, Octavius H. Reamy 

Profile of Daniel Webster in Granite, next to the Sea 
IN Front of Kimball's Hotel. 



Among the persons who were 
basset, previous to 1872, are the 
have owned houses here : — 

William D. Sohier, Esq. 
Martin Bates. 
Henry Bryant. 
Edward Blanchard. 
Mrs. Sarah Wheelwright, 
Henry A. Wheelwright. 
Edward Wheelwright. 
Mrs. Caroline Wheelwright. 
Andrew C. Wheelwright. 
Thomas Richardson. 



summer residents of Co- 
following, most of whom 



Mordecai L. Wallis. 
Nehemiah Ripley. 
Charles Cunningham. 
William Parker. 
John Tyler. 
Calvin Clarke. 
Thomas W. Clarke, Esq. 
Captain John Codman. 
John Howe. 
John C. Howe. 



UP TO DATE. 529 

Edward D. Peters. Edward Cunningham. 

Dr. Samuel Kneeland. B. C. Clark. 

Eiiphalet Jones. Mrs. T. B. Williams. 

Alexander Williams. Samuel T. Snow. 

George O. Sears. Henry Tolman. 

Charles Grant. Washington Brown. 

T. Henry Perkins. Henry D. Hyde. 

Dr. Charles T. Jackson. GrenviUe T. W. Braman. 

Nathaniel D. Silsbee. J. B. Moors. 

Francis P. Appleton. Matthew I^uce. 

There were others whose names have not been ascer- 
tained that might be added to these. 

Among the recent persons of renown who have be- 
come Cohasset resorters are the late Lawrence Barrett 
and several living actors and playwrights, who have taken 
a genuine interest in the town. From the first occa- 
sional outings many men of means have come to establish 
permanent summer homes where the sea cools our 
shore. 

The influence of this part of our town's populace has 
been shown in many instances where expensive improve- 
ments have been encouraged and patronized by them. 
For example, the electric lighting system is another town 
improvement which has been made feasible by means of 
the large addition to our taxes paid by the summer resi- 
dents and by means of the patronage they furnish in 
lighting their own homes with electricity. 

When the old cattle herders from Hingham village used 
to spend their summers here as early as 1640, their light 
in the evenings was the same as the Ouonahassit Indians 
had used — camp fires. When settlers came, forty years 
after, such as Daniel Lincoln, Ibrook Tower, and others, 
tallow candles, both molded ones and " dips," were in- 
dulged in. During a century of the feeble flare of tallow 
and bayberry wax, the use of sperm oil lamps for polite 
occasions crept gradually into Cohasset homes. Indeed, 
for nearly two centuries the little rod of tallow with its 
wick of linen was scepter of the night. Its sway was 
narrow, for none of the streets could be lighted except as 



530 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

tin lanterns punctured with nail holes might carry a feeble 
candle out of doors. 

About the year 1850 a peculiar oil called burning fluid 
began to be used in lamps without a chimney. This mix- 
ture of camphine and alcohol or of naphtha would readily 
creep up on wicks through two little tubes, and would 
blaze away with two modest little flames. It made so 
small an amount of heat that you could touch the burn- 
ing wick with your finger, and then could carry on the 
tip of the finger a film of blazing oil to light another 
lamp. When the wick burned low it was pricked up by 
the end of a knitting needle. 

But petroleum or kerosene by the year 1850 had been 
manufactured for lamps in England, and nine years later 
the wonderful petroleum well at Oil Creek, Pa., made 
kerosene a universal household convenience. For many 
years petroleum had been sold as a liniment, but from 
the year i860 it took its place as a general luminant. 
Kerosene lamps were soon introduced into the churches 
and the town hall, with an occasional one out of doors in 
public places. 

In the homes of the town kerosene is still the main 
reliance ; but for public places like streets, town buildings, 
churches, etc., the modern miracle electricity has been 
introduced. A company of men was formed July 28, 
1890,* for the purpose of furnishing electric lighting for 
the towns of Cohasset and Scituate. It was a business 
enterprise in which a number of our summer residents 
took almost the entire stock. 

The enterprise was a feasible one only upon condition 
that the town would establish street lamps upon the prin- 
cipal thoroughfares of the town. By giving this large 
patronage the Cohasset Electric Company was guaranteed 
at least a safe, if not profitable investment. It was voted 
at the town meeting of 1890 "that the streets of the town, 

* Incorporated August 12, 1890. 



UP TO DATE. 531 

as far as practicable, be lighted as recommended in the 
committee's report by not less than one hundred and fifty 
lio-hts " A contract was made with the Electric Company 
and the lights were turned on in our streets September 
14, 1890. 

The day of dark streets was left behind in the progress 
of our town. 

Whether seen from the water or from some high point 
of land, these strings of brilliant beads hanging upon 
hillsides and in valleys vindicate their place by their 
beauty as well as by their usefulness. The muffled throb- 
bing of the engine which runs the dynamo may be heard 
in the quiet evenings as we sit at home under the glow 
of the incandescent loops, thinking, perhaps, of the lives 
and homes of long ago. 

But the lamps which illumine our highways were much 
more pitifully needed in the years of our ancestors than 
now, for of all our improvements perhaps none is more 
marked than the smoothness of our highways. Origi- 
nally rough beyond any description, they have been 
blasted and dug and built up by incessant care for two 
centuries. They will probably never be straight, and 
indeed the curves of them contribute an element of 
beauty; but the many thousand dollars expended upon 
them have been well spent. And herein the character of 
the town as a summer resort again is manifest, for those 
who have found their pleasure in driving upon our high- 
ways have required that the thousands of dollars in taxes 
which they have paid be applied in a fair measure to 
street improvements. 

A passion for new roads was shown during the ten 
years from 1876 to 1886. Doane Street, Forest Avenue, 
Atlantic Avenue (from Beach Street to the Cove), and 
Nichols Avenue were all undertaken. 

Doane Street, so named in honor of James C. Doane,* 

« Formerly a member of the Board of County Commissioners. 



532 HISTORY OF COHASSET. 

was cut through woods, around ledges, and over a swamp, 
from Beechwood a mile to the Hingham line at a cost of 
$3,352.46. 

Forest Avenue was a bigger undertaking, designed to 
open for summer residences a large area of land between 
Straits Pond and North Main Street where King Street 
enters. The original lay-out of Joshua Fisher in 167 1 pro- 
vided for a straight highway to Breadencheese Tree towards 
the other end of Straits Pond ; but this new road was laid 
out farther to the east, straight over hills and valleys from 
the end of King Street to Jerusalem Road at the east end 
of Straits Pond. The distance was a little over a mile, 
but such a rough one, with so many ledges to blast and so 
many hollows to fill, that it cost $16,580. 

The expectation of residences being located upon this 
road has not been fulfilled in these twenty years; never- 
theless, the highway is abundantly used and has proved its 
necessity. 

Another road, built for the purpose of opening un- 
used acres for summer residences, as Forest Avenue was 
built, is Nichols Avenue. This crooked highway across 
Cat Dam over one of the Beach Islands to the western end 
of Sandy Beach was finished in 1882 at a cost of about 
two thousand five hundred dollars, the five hundred being- 
paid by several private citizens. For ten years this en- 
terprise proved a disappointment, as Forest Avenue had 
done; but the beautiful summer homes that have been 
perched upon the rocky knolls in that vicinity during the 
last few years have redeemed all the promises which in- 
duced the building of the road. 

Each added expenditure for the convenience of summer 
sojourners has increased the income by taxes thus brought 
into the town. The last and most expensive driveway 
undertaken for the pleasure of these adopted citizens is a 
beautiful stretch of macadam running along Beach Island 
between Little Harbor and the ocean. 



UP TO DATE. 





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Mp\ 


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Photo, George Herbert Roberts. 

The Cohasset Savings Bank. 



The Cohasset Savings Bank was established Februaiy 28, 1845, when Paul Pratt, Henry 
J. Turner, and John Bates, with their associates, were incorporated under the State law. 

The first meeting was held at Smith's Tavern, December i, 1845, when the business was 
placed into the hands of the following trustees: — 

Paul Pratt, president. 
Henry J. Turner. Lot Bates. James C. Doane. 

Daniel T. Lothrop. Zenas Stoddard. A. H. Tower. 

Job Cusliing. Thomas Smith. Nichols Tower. 

Francis L. Bates. Levi N. Bates. Solomon J. Beal. 

The bank was kept by Levi N. Bates thirty-seven years in an upper room of his own 
home, above his apothecary store, until his successor, the present treasurer, Caleb Lothrop, 
was chosen; then it was moved downstairs, where it remained until the new bank building 
was completed in 1898. 

The growth of the institution may be judged from the following statistics: — 

There were fifty-three depositors the first year, 1846 total $7,552.00 

At the end of the first ten years the total amount on deposit 74,763'55 

In 1898 there are 1,480 depositors with a total amount 660,244.38 

The trustees of 1898 are as follows: — 

Abraham H. Tower, president. Charles F. Tilden. 

Louis N. Lincoln, vice-president. Morgan B. Stetson (deceased). 

Newcomb Bates, secretary. Caleb F. Nichols. 

Loring Bates. C. James Pratt. 

Philander Bates. Charles A. Gross. 

Newcomb B. Tower. Amos A. Lawrence. 

Charles H. Willard. George K. Nickerson. 



534 



HISTORY OF COH ASSET. 



It was called Jerusalem Road Extension when it was 
finished in 1891, but it has been legally named Atlantic 
Avenue because it lies next to the Atlantic Ocean, and be- 
cause it is practically a lengthening of Atlantic Avenue 
which had already been built from the Cove to Little 
Harbor. 

Some sort of a cartway had been in use over Beach 
Islands since the beginning of Cohasset haying. In later 
years when Cuba Dam was built, a narrow way stretched 
along the top of the dam across the guzzle. A respectable 
wooden bridge was thrown across this channel after the 

dam was cut away 
in 1851 ; but now 
when the new 
Beach Island road 
was made, a new 
iron bridge, 
called Cunning- 
ham Bridge, was 
built at a cost of 
about eight thou- 
sand dollars, half 
of the eight 
being spent upon 
the abutments. 
The whole cost 
of the road was 
over seventeen thousand dollars, but there is not another 
mile of driveway to be found in Massachusetts to com- 
pare with it for beauty and variety of scenery. 

A change in the care of our streets was made in the 
year 1890, when the old system of electing three or four 
surveyors for different parts of the town to make and 
to keep the highways was abandoned. Since then one 
superintendent of streets for the whole town has been 
elected and a more uniform method of providing good 




Photo, Addieon Aldrich. 

Walnut Angle, junction of Jerusalem Road 
AND Atlantic Avenue. 



UP TO DATE. 



535 



highways has been followed. Neighborhood jealousies and 
jobberies have been diminished and the whole responsi- 
bility for good roads rests upon one man, towards whom 
the town never has been niggardly in its appropriations 
for highways. 

The recent State enterprise in appointing a vState High- 
way Commission has touched the Cohasset streets in only 
one place. A stretch of a half mile of macadam leading 
through the Great Swamp on the way to Hingham has 
been built during the past year under the direction of the 
commission, by our superintendent of streets. Thus 
the impassable swamp* which had compelled Cohasset 
carts in early days to make the detour of Cedar Street 
among rocky ledges became at last the most perfect high- 
way in the town. 

Among the many items which could be noted to reveal 
our character as a summer resort is the post office. Our 
mails are more than doubled by the people who have made 
this their summer home. The postal service at the begin- 
ning of our national life has been indicated already in the 
chapter upon " Stagecoach, Packet, and Railway," but the 
small days were continued with only slight growth until 
about fifteen years ago.f The abode of the office in Joel 
Willcutt's time, 1806, was a cobbler shop $ on Elm Street 
near the Cove. 

In Zenas Stoddard's term of twenty-four years its home 
was in a general country store on Main Street, now the 
dwelling of Charles H. Willard. The little case of post- 

* See a subscription paper in the town's historical collection, written by Elisha 
Doane about the year 1815, upon which thirty-four names were signed pledging 
different amounts of labor to open the new road through the swamp. 

t Postmasters appointed by the government from the first one to the last are as 
follows : — 

Samuel Brown. April i, 1803. Joseph St. John, October 21, 1885. 

Joel Willcutt, February 26, 1806. Charles A. Gross, September 13, 1889. 

Zenas Stoddard, March 15, 1837. Joseph St. John, September 25, 1893. 

Edward Tower, April 4, 1861. Harry W. Souther, August 2, 1897. 

Charles A. Gross, March 27, 1873. 

J See picture of this post office on p. 329. 



536 HIS TOR V OF CO HA SSE T. 

office boxes, eighteen, used by Zenas Stoddard at about 
1840, has for its successor at present a case of five hun- 
dred boxes. Letters in those days, before 1845, cost five 
cents each, and no adhesive stamp was used until after 
1847. I" f^ct, no envelope was used, but the letter was so 
folded and sealed as to be its own envelope. 

In the days when postal cards first were in vogue 
(1873) the reading them by curious keepers of the office 
must have been irresistible, and even the letters when they 
were so few must have been targets for Yankee guessers 
who could peek at the addresses. 

As late as twenty years ago the letters were kept in an 
ingenious device which tempted many loungers to examine 
private correspondence. This device was a long cylinder, 
or rather a prism with ten or twelve sides, resting upon 
one end on a store counter. The letters were slipped into 
little racks upon the flat sides of the prism with the ad- 
dresses turned out plainly to view. The case could be 
wheeled around by the lower edge which was exposed so 
that any one who came might turn it, and looking at all of 
the letters, he might at last find his own. A board was 
placed in front of this case so that no one could take a 
letter ; but a long pane of glass allowed the eye to see all 
the letters as they came successively to the pane of glass. 

What an interesting toy for idlers ! And what gossip 
could be expected to suppress a shrewd guess about a 
suspicious handwriting in a letter addressed to a neighbor? 
Many were guilty of looking for letters when there was not 
the least hope of a letter ; for the letters of some neigh- 
bors were more than interesting, just to look at. Com- 
plaints were made not only in Cohasset, but in other towns 
where the same apparatus was in vogue, and the old 
" wheel " was abolished by order of the government. 

The office now has reached the dignity of the Third 
Class, issuing money orders, and has a building con- 
structed for its own use. The stamps that are sold each 



UP TO DA TE. 



537 



year nowadays amount to three thousand dollars' worth, 
to say nothing of the rent of three hundred and seventy- 
four boxes. 

The names, moreover, which are written nowadays 
upon letters passing through this office are many of them 
different from those which formerly flourished here, 
though the family names Bates, Pratt, Tower, Lincoln, 
Nichols, and a few others still keep their heritage. The 
Portuguese names, Grassie, Jason, Silvia, and others, with 
various names of an Irish origin, have obtained a large 
place. 




Photo, M. H. Kearny. 

Colonel Pope's Residence, Jerusalem Road. 

The variety of people now comprised within the limits 
of the town is quite remarkable for so small a population. 
In the beginning all were poor and all were filled with 
substantially the same experiences and the same ambi- 
tions ; but this homogeneous condition has passed away, 
and we now have the rich with the poor, the cultured 
with the unlearned, the cosmopolitan with the provincial, 
in a greater variety, perhaps, than any town of the same 
size in the Commonwealth. All these kinds of human life 



535 HISTORY OF COII ASSET. 

are mutually useful, moreover, and afford a stable condi- 
tion of society able to endure good times or bad times 
without much disturbance. 

No strikes affect us because no manufacturing industry 
has ever engaged a large proportion of our town. Even 
the shoe business has never been established as a town 
industry, though some twenty-five years ago a number of 
small shops in different parts of the town furnished "job 
work " for a great many upon shoes manufactured in 
neighboring towns Also " slop work," or the making of 
cheap garments, was carried on by many needlewomen in 
their own homes, after the fishing business had failed. 
But no large factory since our fish packing, ever has been 
established here ; neither is there much likelihood that 
one ever will be established. 

The character of this town as a suburb and summer 
resort, to the exclusion of industries, has become fixed. 
A fair estimate of the future for at least a century must 
predict for Cohasset a suburban retirement. Many more 
homes of a comfortable and expensive sort may be ex- 
pected to nestle among our ledges and hills. To Nan- 
tasket upon one side and to North Scituate upon the 
other must be given the popularity that brings swarms 
of humanity to the beaches in summer ; but to Cohasset, 
which has no long beach and whose shore line has been 
preempted already by quiet-loving people, there must 
remain a long era of immunity from crowds. 

People of large means have laid out generous areas for 
their "grounds," and no one can see any near prospect 
of many of these beautiful estates being parceled out to 
small holders. As rapid transit to Boston is developed, 
in years to come our hills remote from the shore will offer 
homes of a less expensive sort to a large number of work- 
aday people. 

Little by little the old landmarks familiar to our an- 
cestors will be transformed by the hands of an incoming 



UP TO DATE. 539 

people and by the descendants of our old pioneers, who 
may fondly return to claim a part of their ancestral home- 
steads. 

Even under our very eyes these things are now being 
done, and no one could bid them stop; but these lines 
have been written and the pages of this book have been 
filled with a record of events which have transpired here 
for the purpose of furnishing all who come with some 
faint conception of the honorable career of this beautiful 
town. 



APPENDIX 



BOTANY OF COHASSET. 

The following list, contributed by Miss Priscilla L. Collier, contains most of the 
commoner plants to be found in Cohasset. It is not by any means complete, but 
represents what Miss Collier has been able to collect in her leisure time during the 
past three seasons. 

RANUNCULACEiE. — Crowfoot Family. 

Clematis Virginiana, L. Virgin's Bower. 
Anemone nemokosa, L. Wood Anemone. 
Hepai ICA TRILOBA, Chaix. Round-lobed Hepatica. 
Anemonella thalictroides, ^>>ac>%. Rue Anemone. 
THALICTRUM DIOICUM, L. Early Meadow Rue. 

POLYGAMUM, Mufil. Tall Meadow Rue. 

PURPURAscens, Z,. Purplish Meadow Rue. 
Ranunculus abortivus, L. Small-fiowered Crowfoot, 

FASCICULARIS, Afa-^/. Early Crowfoot. 
,, BULBOSUS, L. Bulbous Buttercups. 

ACRIS, Z.. Tall Buttercups. 
Caltha palus tris, L. Marsh Marigold. 
Cop lis TRIFOLIA, Salisb. Three-leaved Goldthread. 
Aquilegia Canadensis, L. Wild Columbine. 

BERBERIDACE^. — Barberry Family. 

Berberis vulgaris, L. Common Barberry. 

NYMPHiEACE^. — Water Lily Family. 
NYMPHy^A ODORATA, Ait. Sweet-scented Water Lily. 
Nuphar advena, ^2/. / Yellow Pond Lily. 

SARRACENIACEiiE. — Pitcher Plant Family. 

Sarracenia purpurea, L. Pitcher Plant, Sidesaddle Flower. 

PAPAVERACEiE. — Poppy Family. 

Sanguinaria Canadensis, L. Bloodroot. 
Chelidonium majus, L. Celandine. 

FUMARIACEiE. — Fumitory Family. 

CORYDALIS GLAUCA, Piirsh. Pale Corydalis. 

CRUCIFER.flE. — Mustard Family. 

Draba verna, L. Whitlow Grass. 

Nasturtium officinale, R. Br. True Water Cress. 

Armoracia, Fries. Horse-radish. 
Barbarea vulgaris, R. Br. Common Winter Cress, Yellow Rocket. 
Sisymbrium officinale, Scop. Hedge Mustard. 
Brassica sinapistrum, Boiss. English Charlock. 
Capsella Bursa-Pastoris, Moench. Shepherd's Purse. 
LEPiniUM VIRGINICUM, L. Wild Peppergrass. 
Raphanus raphanistrum, Z.. Wild Radish. 
CaKILE AmERICANUM, A'«//. American Sea-rocket. 



542 APPENDIX. 

CISTACE^. — Rock Rose Family. 

Helianthemum Canadense, Michx. Frostweed. 
HUDSONIA TOMENTOSA, Nutt. Downy Hudsonia. 

VIOLACE^. — Violet Family. 

Viola pedata, L. Bird-foot Violet. 

„ PALMATA, L. Common Blue Violet. 
var. CUCULLATA, Gray. 
BLANDA, Willd. Sweet White Violet. 
„ LANCEOLATA, L. Lance-leaved Violet. 
„ CANINA, L., var. MUHLENBERGII, Gray. Dog Violet. 

CARYOPHYLLACE^. — Pink Family. 

Saponaria OFFICINALIS, L. Soapvvort, Bouncing Bet. 
SiLENE CUCUBALUS, Wibel. Bladder Campion. 
„ NOCTIFLORA. Night-flovvering Catchfly. 
Lychnis Githago, Lain. Com Cockle. 
Arenaria laterifolia, L. 
Stellaria media, Smith. Common Chickweed. 

LONGI FOLIA, yl/«/^/. Long-leaved Stitchwort. 
Cerastium V1SC0SUM,Z. Mouse-ear Chickweed. 

„ VULGATUM,/,. Large Mouse-ear Chickweed. 

„ ARVENSE, L. Field Chickweed. 

BUDA, Gray: Spergularia, Wood; Buda-RUBRa, Z'awzo^^. Sand Spurrey. 

PORTULACACEiE. — Purslane Family. 

PORTULACA OLERACEA, L. Common Purslane. 

HYPERICACEiE. — St. John's-wort Family. 

Hypericum perforatum,/,. Common St. John's-wort. 
„ NUDICAULE. Walt. 

Canadense, L. 
multilum, L. 
Elodes CAMPANULATA, Pursh. Marsh St. John's-wort. 

MALVACEAE. — Mallow Family. 

Malva ROTUNDIFOLIA, L. Common Mallow. 
SYLVESTRIS, L. High Mallow. 
MOSCHATA. Musk Mailow ''escaped). 
ALCEA, L. 

GERANIACEiE. —Geranium Family. 

Geranium maculatum, L. Wild Cranesbill. 

Robertianum, L. Herb Robert. 

Carolinianum, L. 
OXALIS STRICTA, Sav. Yellow Wood Sorrel. 
IMPATIENS VVLVA, Nutt. Spotted Touch-me-not, Jewelweed. 
„ PALLIDA, Ntitt. Pale Touch-me-not. 

ILICINE^. 

Ilex OPACA, Ait. American Holly. 

VERTICILLATA, Gray. Black Alder, Winterberry. 
,, L^vigata, Gray. Smooth Winterberry. 
„ glabra, Gray. Inkberry. 

CELASTRACEiE. — Staff Tree Family. 

Celastrus scandens, L. Waxwork, Climbing Bittersweet. 

VITACEiE. — Vine Family. 

VITIS Labrusca, L. Northern Fox Grape. 

Ampelopsis quinquefolia, Mx. Virginia Creeper, Woodbine. 



APPENDIX. 54: 

SAPINDACE^.— Soapberry Family. 
Acer RUBRUM, L. Red or Swamp Maple. 

ANACARDIACE^.— Cashew Family. 

Rhus typhina, L. Staghom Sumach. 
GLABRA, L. Smooth Sumach. 
COPAI.LINA, Z. Dwarf Sumach. 
VENENATA, D C. Poison Sumach or Dogwood. 
", Toxicodendron, L. Poison Ivy, Poison Oak. 

POLYGALACE^. — Milkwort Family. 

POLYGALA SANGUINEA, L. 

VERTICILLATA, L. 

LEGUMINOS-^. — Pulse Family. 

BaPTISIA TINCTORIA, R. Br. Wild Indigo. 
TRIFOLIUM ARVENSE, L. Rabbit-foot or Stone Clover. 

PRATENSE, L. Red Clover. 

MEDIUM. Zigzag Clover. 

REPENS, L. White Clover. 

HYBRIDUM. Z.. Alsike Clover. 

AGRARiUM. Yellow or Hop Clover. 
Melilotus officinalis, Willi. Yellow Melilot, 
MiiDiCAGO LUPULINA,/.. Black Medick, Nonesuch. 
Robinia Pseudacacia, L. Common Locust or False Acacia. 
Desmodium nudiflorum, D C. 
Lespedeza violacea, Fers. Bush Clover. 

POLYSTACHYA, Michx. 

VICIA "sATiVA, L. Common Vetch or Tare. 

Cracca, L. 
Lathyrus MARiTiMUS, Big. Beach Pea. 

PALUSTRIS, L. 

Apios TUBEROSA, Moench. Groundnut. 
AmpHICARP^a monoica, Nutt. Hog Peanut. 

ROSACE.^. — Rose Family. 

PrUNUS MARITIMA, Wang. Beach Phmi. 

SEROTINA, Ehrh. Wild Black Cherry. 
]' PENNSYLVANICA, L. Wild Red Cherry. 
Virgin IAN A, L. Choke Cherry. 
SpirI^A salicipolia, L. Common Meadowsweet. 
TOMENTOSA, L. Hardback, Steeple Bush. 
RUBUS ODORATUS, L. Purple Flowering Raspberry. 
STRIGOSUS, Mx. Wild Red Raspberry. 
OCCIDENTALIS, L. Black Raspberry, Thimbleberry. 
VILLOSUS, Ait. Common High Blackberry. 
HISPIDUS, L. Running Swamp Blackberry. 
" CANADENSIS, /,. Low Blackberry. 

GEUM VIRGINIANUM. c. u 

Waldsteinia fragaroides, Tratt. Barren Strawberry. 
Fragaria Virginiana, il////. Wild Strawberry. 

VESCA, L. 
POTENTILLA NORVEGICA, Z. 

ARGENTEA, L. Silvery Cmquefoil. 
ANSERINA, L. Silver Weed. ^. r •, 

Canadensis, L. Common Five-finger or CmquetoU. 
AGRIMONIA EUPATORIA, L. Common Agrimony. 
Rosa blanda. Ait. Common Wild Rose. 
CAROLINA, L. Swamp Wild Rose. 
RUBIGINOSA, L. Sweetbrier, Eglantine. 
Pyrus ARBUTIFOLIA, Z. Chokeberry. c, . d , 

AMELANCHIER CANADENSIS, Torr. and Gr. Shad Busn. 



544 



APPENDIX. 



SAXIFRAGACE-^. — Saxifrage Family. 

Saxifraga Virginiensis, Mx. Early Saxifrage. 
RiBES OXYCANTHOIDES, L. Gooseberry. 

CRASSULACEiE. — Orpine Family. 

SEDUM acre, L. Mossy Stonecrop. 
„ Telephium, L. Live-forever. 

HAMAMELIDEiE. — Witch-hazel Family. 

HaMAMELIS VIRGINIANA, /,. Witch-hazel. 

MELASTOMACEiE. 

Rhexia Virginica, L. Meadow Beauty. 

LYTHRACEiE. — Loosestrife Family. 

Lythrum Salicaria.Z. Spiked Loosestrife. 
„ Hyssopifolia, L. 

ONAGRACEiE. — Evening Primrose Family. 

Ludwigia PALUSTRIS, Ell. Water Purslane. 

Epilobium aNGUSTIFOLIUM, L. Great Willow-herb, Fireweed. 

LINEARE, Muhl. 
CEnothera pumila.Z.. 

,, BIENNIS, L. Common Evening Primrose. 

CiRC^A LUTETIANA, L. Enchanter's Nightshade. 

FICOIDEiE. 

Mollugo verticillata, L. Carpet-weed. 

UMBELLIFERiE.— Parsley Family. 

Daucus Carota, L. Carrot. 

Pastinaca sativa, L. Parsnip. 

LiGUSTicuM SCOTICUM, L. Scotch Lovage. 

CiCUTA MACULATA. Spotted Cowbane, Musquash Root. 

Heracleum LANATUM. Downy Cow Parsnip. 

ARALIACEiE. — Ginseng Family. 

ARALIA NUDICAULIS, L. Wild Sarsaparilla. 

,, TRIFOLIA, Descme and Planch. Dwarf Ginseng. 

CORNACEiE. — Dogwood Family. 

CORNUS Canadensis, L. Bunchberry. 

„ FLORIDA, L. Flowering Dogwood. 
PANICULATA, L Her. 
Nyssa sylvatica, Marsh. Tupelo, Sour Gum Tree. 

CAPRIFOLIACEiE. — Honeysuckle Family. 

Sambucus Canadensis, L. Common Elder. 
Viburnum acerifolium, L. Dockmackie, Arrowwood. 

DENTATUM,Z. Arrowwood. 

LENTAGO, L. Sweet Viburnum, Sheepberry. 
Triosteum perfoliatum. Tinker's Weed, Wild Coffee. 

RUBIACE.flE. — Madder Family, 

HOUSTONIA CCERULEA, Z. Bluets, Innocence. 
Cephalanthus OCCIDENTALIS, L. Button Bush. 
Mitch EI. LA REPENS, L. Partridge Berry. 
Galium circ^.zans, Michx. Wild Licorice. 
„ TRIFIDUM, /,. Small Bedstraw. 



APPENDIX. 



COMPOSITiE. — Composite Family. 
MIKANIA SCANDENS, L. Climbing Hempweed. 
EUPATOKiaM PERFOLIAIUM, Tourti. Thoroughvvort, Boneset. 

PURPUREUM, Z,. Joe-Pye Weed. 
SOLIDAGO BICOLOR, L. 

ODOR A, Ait. Sweet Golden-rod. 
RUGOSA, Mill. 
„ Elio I'Til, 7'or. and Gray. 

SEROTINA, Ail. 
SEMPERVIRENS, Z.. 
SERICOCARPUS CONYZOIDES, A'eeS 

Aster corymbosus, Ail. 

„ NOV^-ANGLI/E, /.. 

„ UNDULATUS, L. 

„ CORDIFOUUS, /.. 

„ ERICOIUES, Z. 

„ MULTIFLORUS, .-i// 

„ Novi-Belgii, Z. 

„ PUNICEUS, L. 

VMHELLA'IVS, Mill. 
„ LINARIIFOLIUS, Z. 

PATENS, All. 

POLYPHYLLUS, M'illd. 

Erigeron belli DiFOLlUS, il/«/4/. Robin's Plantain. 
„ Philadelphicus. Z. Fleabane. 

STRIGOSUS, Muhl. Daisy Fleabane. 
AnteNNARIA PLANTAGINIFOLIA, Hook. Plantain-leaved Everlasting. 
Anaphalis MARGARHACEA, Benlli. and Hook. Pearly Everlasting. 
Gnaphalium POLYCEPHALUM, Mx. Everlasting. 

ULIGINOSUM, Z. Cudweed. 
Ambrosia artemislefolia, Z. Roman Wormwood, Ragweed. 
Xanthium spinosum, /,. Spiny Cocklebur. 
RUDBECKIA HIRTA, Z. Cone Flower. 
Helianthus uivaricatus. Z. Wild Sunflower. 

TUBEROSUS, L. Jerusalem Artichoke. 
BiDENS FRONDOSA, L. Common Beggars Ticks. 
CERNUA, L. Smaller Bur Marigold. 
CHRYSANTHEMOIDES, Miclix. Larger Bur Marigold. 
Anthemis Cotula, D C. Mayweed. 
Achillea millefolium, Z. Yarrow. 

Chrysanthemum leucanthemum, Z. Oxeye Daisy, Whiteweed. 
Tanacetum vulgare, L. Tansy. 
Senecio aureus. L. Golden Ragwort, Squawweed. 

vulgaris, Z.. Groundsel. 
Erecthites hieracifolia, A'a/. Fireweed. 
Arctium Lappa, Z., z'ar. minus, ^roy. Burdock. 
Cnicus LANCEolatus, Hoffm. Common Thistle. 
PUMILUS, Torr. Pasture Thistle. 
„ ARVENSIS, Hoffm. Canada Thistle. 
Tragopogon PRATENsis, L. Goat's Beard. 
Krigia Virginica, Milld. Dwarf Dandelion. 
Chicorium Intybus, Z. Chicory. 
Leontodon autumnalis.Z,. Fall Dandelion, Hawkbit 
HiERAClUM Canadense, Mx. Canada Hawkweed. 
„ PANICULATUM, L. Panicled Hawkweed. 

„ VENOSUM, L. Rattlesnake Hawkweed. 

„ aurantiacum, L. 

Prenanthes alba, L. White Lettuce. 

SERPANTARIA, Pursh. Lion's Foot, Gall of the Earth. 
Taraxacum officinale, Weber. Dandelion. 
Lactuca Canadensis, Z. Wild Lettuce. 

„ LEUCOPH/EA, Gray. Blue Lettuce. 

Sonchus oleraceus, L. Common Sow Thistle. 
,, ASPER, Vill. Spiny-leaved Sow Thistle. 

„ ARVENSIS, L. Field Sow Thistle. 



545 



546 



APPENDIX. 



LOBELIACEiE.— Lobelia Family, 



Lobelia cardinalis, L. Cardinal Flower. 
„ INFLATA, L. Indian Tobacco. 

ERICACEAE. — Heath Family. 

GaYLUSSACIA FRONDOSA, Torr. and Gray. Dangleberry. 

„ resinosa, Torr. and Gray. Black Huckleberry. 

Vaccinium PENNSYLVANlCUM,Z.aw/. Dwarf Blueberry. 

„ VACILLANS, Solander. Low Blueberry. 

„ CORYMBOSUM, L. Tall Blueberry. 

„ MACROCARi'ON, -4/7. Cranberry. 

Epig^a REPENS. Trailing Arbutus. 

GaULTHERIA PROCUMBENS, /.. Checkerberry, Creeping Wintergreen. 
Andromeda ligustrina, Muhl. 
Kalmia angustifolia, L. Sheep Laurel. 
Rhododendron viscosum, Torr. Clammy Oralea. 
Clethra alnifolia, L. Sweet Pepper Bush. 
Chimaphila umbellata, Nutt. Prince's Pine, Pipsissewa. 

MACULATA, Pursh. Spotted Wintergreen. 
Pyrola ELLIPTICA, Nutt. Shin Leaf. 
MONOTROPA UNIFLORA,/,. Indian Pipe, Corpse Plant. 

„ HYPOPITYS, L. Pinesap, False Beech Drops. 

PLUMBAGINACEiE. — Leadwort Family. 

Statice Limonium, L. Marsh Rosemary, Sea Lavender. 

PRIMULACEiE.— Primrose Family. 

HOTTONIA INFLATA, Ell. Featherfoil, Water Violet. 
Trientalis Americana, Pursh. American Star Flower. 
Steironema lanceo latum, Gray. 
Lysimachia vulgaris, L. 

„ quadrifolia, L. Four-leaved Loosestrife. 

„ STRICTA, Alt. 

NUMMULAria, L. Moneywort. 
AnagaLLIS arvensis, L. Pimpernel, Poor Man's Weatherglass. 

APOCYNACEiE. — Dogbane Family. 

APOCYNUM ANDROS.EMIFOLIUM, L. Spreading Dogbane. 

ASCLEPIADACEiE. — Milkweed Family. 

Asclepias INCARNATA, L. Swamp Milkweed. 

„ CORNUTI, Z'ffawwf. Common Milkweed, Silkweed. 

VERTICILLATA, L. 

BORAGINACEyE. — Borage Family. 

Myosotis palustris. Withering. True Forget-me-not. 
SYMPHYTUM officinale, L. Comfrey. 
ECHIUM VULGARE, L. Viper's Bugloss, Blueweed. 

CONVOLVULACE.ffii. — Convolvulus Family. 

Convolvulus sepium, /.., var. Americanus. Hedge Bindweed. 
CuscuTA Gronovii, Wllld. Dodder. 

SOLANACEiE. — Nightshade Family. 

SOLANUM DULCAMARA, L. Bittersweet. 

„ nigrum, /,. Common Nightshade. 

Lycium vuLCiARE, Dunal. Matrimony Vine. 
Datura stramonium, L. Jamestown Weed, Thorn Apple. 

„ TATULA, L. Purple Thorn Apple. 



APPENDIX. 547 

SCROPHULARIACEiE. — Figwort Family. 

VerbascUM THAPSUS, Z. Common Mullein. 

BLATTAKIA, L, Moth Mullein. 
LINARIA Canadensis, Dumont. Toadflax. 

VULGARIS, Mill. Butter and Eggs, Ramsted. 
Chelone GLABRA, L. Turtlehead, Snakehead. 
MiMULUS RlNGENS, L. Monkey Flower. 
Veronica officinalis, L. Common Speedwell. 

SERPYLLI FOLIA. Thyme-leaved Speedwell. 
Gerardia pedicularia, L. 

QUERCIFOLIA, Pursh. Smooth False Foxglove. 
,', PURPUREA, L. Purple Gerardia. 

„ MARITIMA, Raf. Seaside Gerardia. 

Pedicularis Canadensis, L. Lousewort, Wood Betony. 
MeLAMPYRUM Americanum, Michx. Cow Wheat. 

OROBANCHACE^. — Broom Rape Family. 

Aphyllon umfi.okum. One-flowered Cancer Root. 

LENTILABULARIACEiE. — Bladderwort Family 

Utricularia clandestina, Null. 

VULGARIS. Greater Bladderwort. 

VERBENACE/E. — Vervain Family. 

Verbena urtiC/EFolia, L. White Vervain. 
HASTATA, L. Blue Vervain. 

LABIATiE. — Mint Family. 

Trichostema dichotomum, L. Blue Curls, Bastard Pennyroyal. 
Teucrium Cana dense, L. American Germander, Wood Sage. 
Mentha viridis, L. Spearmint. 

„ PIPERITA, L. Peppermint. 
Lycopus Virginicus, L. Bugleweed. 

sinuatus. Ell. 
Hedeoma PULEGIOIDES, Pers. American Pennyroyal. 
Nepeta Cataria, L. Catnip. 

Glechoma, Benth. Ground Ivy. 
Scutellaria galeviculata, L. Skullcap. 
Brunella vulgaris, L. Self-heal or Healall. 
Leonurus CARDIACA, L. Motherwort. 

PLANTAGINACEiE. — Plantain Family. 

Plan TAGO major, L. Common Plantain. 
MARITIMA, L. Seaside Plantain. 
l, LANCEOLATA, L. Rib Grass or Ripple Grass. 

AMARANTACEiE. — Amaranth Family. 

Amarantus retroflexas, L. 

„ ALBUS, L. Pigweed. 

CHENOPODIACE/E. — Goosefoot Family. 

Salicornia herbacea, L. Glasswort. 

Salsola Kali, L. Saltwort. 

ATRIPLEX HASTATA, Gray. , 

CheNOPODIUM album, L. Common Goosefoot or Lamb s Quarters. 

PHYTOLACCACEiE. — Pokeweed Family. 

Phytolacca decandra, L. Common Poke, Garget. 



i48 



APPENDIX. 



POLYGONACEiE. — Buckwheat Family. 

RUMEX ACETOSELLA, L. Field or Sheep Sorrel. 
Polygonum convolvulus, L. Black Bindweed. 

HVDROPIPEROIDES, Michx. Mild Water Pepper. 

HYDROPIPER, L. Common Water Pepper or Smartweed. 

SAGITTATUM, L. Arrow-leaved Tear-thumb. 

ARl FOLIUM, L. Halberd-leaved Tear-thumb. 

AVICULARE, L. Knotgrass, Dooryard Weed. 

DUMETORUM, z'ar. SCANDENS, Gray. Climbing False Buckwheat. 

ACRE, HBK. Water Smartweed. 
POLYGONELLA ARTICULATA, Meisn. 

LAURACEiE. —Laurel Family. 

Sassafras officinale, Nees. 

LiNDERA Benzoin, Blume. Spicebush, Benjamin Bush. 

SANTALACEiE. — Sandalwood Family. 

CoMANDRA UMBELLATA, Nutt. Bastard Toadflax. 

EUPHORBIACEiE. — Spurge Family. 

Euphorbia polygoni folia, L. Shore Spurge. 

MACULATA, L. 

Cyparissias, L. Cypress Spurge. 

URTICACE.ffi:. — Nettle Family. 

Ulmus Americana, L. American Elm. 

Celtis OCCIDENTALIS, L. Nettle Tree or Hackberry. 

Cannabis sativa, L. Hemp. 

UrTICA DIOICA, L. Stinging Nettle. 

PLATANACE/E. — Plane Tree Family. 

PlaTANUS OCCIDENTALIS, /,. Sycamore, Buttonwood. 

JUGLANDACEiE. — Walnut Family. 

JUGLANS CINEREA. Butternut, White Walnut. 
Carya AIMA, Nutt. Shagbark or Shellbark Hickory. 
,, PORCINA, Nuti. Pignut, Hickory. 

MYRICACE/E.— Sweet-Gale Family. 

Myrica cerifeka, L. Bayberry. 

asplenifolia, E>idl. Sweet Fern. 

CUPULIFERiE. — Oak Family. 

Betula lf.nta, L. Black Birch. 

lutea, Mx. Yellow Birch. 
POPULIFOLIA, Ait. White Birch. 
ALNUS INCANA, Willd. Speckled or Hoary Alder. 

„ SERRULATA, Willd. Smooth Alder. 
Carpinus Caroliniana, Walt. Hornbeam. 
OSTRYA Virginica, Wil/d. Hop Hornbeam. 
CoRYLUS Americana, Walt. Hazelnut. 
QUERCUS alba, L. White Oak. 

BICOLOR, Willd. Swamp White Oak. 
'„ Prinus, Z. Chestnut Oak. 

ILICI folia, Wafiff. Bear Oak. 
„ COCCINEA, Wang. Scarlet Oak. 

Fagus ferruginea, Ait. Beech. 

SALICACEiE. — Willow Family. 

POPULUS TREMULOIDES, A'Ix. American Aspen. 

„ BALSAMIFERA, Z,., x/ar. CANDICANS, Gray. Balm of Gilead. 



APPENDIX. 549 

CONlFERiE. — Pine Family. 

JUNIPERUS COMMUNIS, L. Juniper. 

VIRGINIANA, L. Red Cedar, Savin. 
PiNUS RIGIUA, Mill. Pitch Pine. 
STROBUS, L. White Pine. 
TsuGA Canadensis, Carr. Hemlock. 

ORCHIDACE.1E.— Orchis Family. 

Spiranthes cernua, iPiV-^. Ladies' Tresses. 
GOODYERA REPENS, K. Br. Rattlesnake Plantain. 

PUBESCENS,i?. 5r. 

Arethusa BULBOSA.Z. Arethusa. 
Calopogon PUIXHELLUS, R. Br. 
Pogonia OPHIOGLOSSOIDES, Nutt. 
Habenaria LACERA, R. Br. Ragged Orchis. 
Cypripedium aCaule, Ait. Lady's Slipper. 

HYDROCHARIDACEiE. — Frog's-bit Family. 

Vallisneria spiralis,/.. Eelgrass. 

IRIDACEyE.— Iris Family. 

I RIS VERSICOLOR, L. Blue Flag. 

„ PRISMATICA, Piirsk. Slender Flag. 
Sisyrinchium anceps, Cav. Blue-eyed grass. 

AMARYLLIDACEiE.— Amaryllis Family. 

Hypoxis erecta, L. Star Grass. 

LILIACE^. — Lily Family. 

Smilax rotunDIFOLIA, L. Greenbrier. 
HERBACEA, L. Carrion-Flower. 
Asparagus officinalis, L. 

PolygonaTUM biflorum. Ell. Smaller Solomon's Seal. 
Smilacina RACEMOSA, Desf. False Spikenard. 

„ STELLA TA, Desf. 

Maianthemum Canadense, Desf. Low Solomon's Seal. 
Allium vineale, L. Garlic. 

Ornithogalum umbellatum, L. Star of Bethlehem. 
LILIUM Philadelphicum. Wild Orange-Red Lily. 

Canauense, L. Yellow Lily. 
Erythronium Americanum, Ker. Dogtooth Violet. 
Oakesia sessilifolia, Watson. Bellwort. 
Uvularia perfoliata. 

Medeola Virginiana, L. Cucumber Root. 
Trillium cernuum, L. Nodding Trillium. 

PONTEDERIACEiE. — Pickerel-weed Family. 

Pontederia cordata, /,. Pickerel-weed. 

XYRIDACE^. — Yellow-eyed Grass Family. 

XyriS FLEXUOSA, Muhl. Yellow-eyed Grass. 

TYPHACE^. — Cat-tail Family. 

Typha LATIFOLIA, L. Cat-tail. 
Sparganium SiUVl£X, /Judson. Bur Reed. 

ARACE^. — Arum Family. 
Aris^ma TRIPHYLLUM, Tor. Jack-in-the-pulpit. 
Symplocarpus FCETIDUS, Salts. Skunk Cabbage. 
Acorus calamus, L. Sweet Flag. 



550 



APPENDIX. 



LEMNACEiE. — Duckweed Family. 
LEMNA TRISULCA, L. Duckweed. 

ALISMACEiE. — Water-plantain Family. 
SAGITTARIA variabilis, Englm. Arrowhead. 

GRAMINEiE. — Grass Family. 

PHLEUM PRATENSE, L. Herd's Grass, Timothy. 
AgropYRUM REPENS, Beaur. Couch, Quitch, or Quick Grass. 

EQUISETACEiE. — Horsetail Family. 
EquisETUM ARVENSE, L. Horsetail. 

FILICES. — Ferns. 

POLYPODIUM VULGARE, L. Polypody. 
Pteris aquilina, L. Brake. 
ASPLENIUM EBENEUM, Ait. 

FILIX-FCEMINA, Bernli. 
Phego pteris hkxagonoptera. Beech Fern. 
ASPIDIUM thelipteris. 

NOVEBORA cense. 
SPINULOSUM. 
CRISTA'IUM. 
MARGINALE. 

ACROSriCHOlDES. Christmas Fern. 
Onoclea SENSIBILIS. Sensitive Fern. 
DiCKSONIA punctiloba (pilosiuscula). 
OSMUNDA REGALIS. Flowering Fern. 

„ Claytoniana. 

„ CINNAMOMEA. Cinnamon Fern. 

LYCOPODIACEiE. — Club Moss Family. 

Lycopodium lucidulum, L. Club Moss. 

„ OBSCURUM, L. Ground Pine. 

„ CLAVAtum,/.. Club Moss. 

„ COMPLANATUM, L. Spreading Moss, Evergreen. 



FUNGUSES. 



1. ASCOMYCETES. 

Helvelle^. 
Leotia lubrica. 
Morchella conica. Conical Morel. 

2. BASIDROMYCETES. 

(i) Scleroderma. Hard-rind Puff Ball. 

Scleroderma vulgare. Common Hard-rind Puff Ball. 

(2) Lycoperde^. 

Lycoperdon giganteum. Giant Puff Ball. 

„ cyathiforme. Cup-shaped Puff Ball. 

„ sacchatum. 

„ plumbeum. Lead-colored Puff Ball. 

Geaster. 

(3) Phalloide.«. 

Ithyphallus impudicus. Fetid Wood Witch. 
Mutinus caninus. 



. I />/'/■:. VD/x. 



BASI DROM YCETES — contmued. 

(4) ClavakiE/E. Coral Mushrooms. 

Sparassis crispa. 
Clavaria amethystina. 

,, fusiformis. 

,, pistillaris. 

(5) Hydne^. Spine Mushrooms. 

Hydnum imbricatum. 

„ repandum. Hedgehog Mushrootn. 

(6) POLYPORE^. Pore Mushrooms, 

Dsedalea unicolor. 

Polyporus betulini. 

,, Curtisii. 

,, sulphureus. Sulphury Polyporus. 

Boletus edulis. Edible Boletus. 
„ felleus. Bitter Boletus. 
„ scaber. Rough-stem Boletus. 
„ ornatipes. 
„ brevipes. 

„ granulus. Granulated Boletus. 
punctipes. 
pictus. 
,, alveolatus. 
Boletinus porosus. 
Strobilomyces strobilaceus. 

(7) AGARICINE^. Agarics. 

Melanosporae. {Spores Hack or dark gray.) 
Coprinus comatus. Shaggy Coprinus. 
,, atramentarius. /nky Coprinus. 
„ micaceous. Glistening Coprinus. 
„ ovatus. 
Porphyrosporas. {Spores purplt-black.) 
Hypoloma sublateritius. 
Agaricus cam pester. Common Mushroom. 
„ arvensis. Horst Mushroom. 
Ochrosporse. {Spores bright brown or bright rust color.) 
Cortinarius cinnamomeus. Cinnamon Cortinarius. 
,, ,, var. semisangumeus. 

violaceus. / 'lolet Cortinarius. 
alboviolaceus. 
,, CKiulescens. 

Entoloma sereceum. 
Leucosporae. {Spores whitish or pale yellow.) 

Hygrophorus mimatus. Vermilion Mushroom, 
,, niveus. 

„ conicus. Red Juice Mushroom. 

Lactarius chrysorrheus. 

piperatus. Fiery Milk Mushroom. 
„ vellerius. 

„ volemus. 

Clitocybe laccata. Waxy Clitocybe. 
Russula heterophylla. 
„ furcata. 
fcetens. 

emetica. Emetic Mushroom. 
„ lepida. 
CoUybia radicata. Rooting Mushroom. 
Marasmius oreades. Fai/y Ring Mushroom, 
„ iirens. 

,, peronatus. 

,, naucoria. 

Tricholoma columbetta. 

Armillaria mellea. Honey-colored Mushroom. 
Lepiota procera. Parasol Mushrootn. 



551 



552 



APPENDIX. 



BASIDROMVCETES — fo«//»«f<f. 

(7) Agaricine^. Agar-ici — continued. 

Leucospora;. ( Spores whitish or pale yellow.') 
Lepiota Badhami. 

„ naucinoides. Smooth Mushroo7n. 
„ cepjestipes. 
,, metulsespora. 
„ cristdta. 
Amanitopsis vaginata. 
Amanita phalloides. Death Cup. 
„ mappa. 
„ muscaria. Ply Agaric. 



MEASUREMENIS OF TREES. 

BY DR, O. H. HOWE. 

The following measurements, except the first, were made in 1898 and represent 
the circumference of each tree three teet above the ground. 

The elm which formerly stood close to South Main Street, near the Scituate 
line, in front of the Bates Estate (formerly the estate of Curammgs Lincoln), was 
felled October 7, 1892, as it was somewhat decayed and unsafe. It was probably 
the largest tree in town. A currant bush grew in a crotch of the tree about ten feet 
above the ground and ripened its currants yearly for more than thirty years. Cir- 
cumference of tree, 189 inches. 

Elm, North Main Street, in rear of residence of Thomas L. Bates, 151 inches. 

Ash, King Street, in front of house of James W. Nichols, 129 inches. 

Ash stump (hollow and now used as a flowerpot). South Main Street, in front of 
house of C. James Nichols, 163 inches. 

Buttonwood, Highland Avenue, near the pond, 138 inches. 

Buttonwood, Beechwood Street, north of Bound Brook, 120 inches. 

Beech, Beechwood Street, south of Bound Brook, 88 inches. 

Holly, Atlantic Avenue, near Sandy Cove, 49 inches. 

Hemlock, in rear of Beechwood Church, 97 inches. 

Black birch, in same locality as last, 75 inches. 

Tupelo, Jerusalem Road, in grounds of George W. Preston, 87 inches. 

Tupelo, in Mohawk Valley (a very handsome specimen ) , 62 inches. 

Nettle tree, Jerusalem Road, in grounds of Ellis Motte, 79 inches. This tree 
{^Celtis occidentalis, L.) is somewhat rare, but grows abundantly and in thickets 
overspreading the rocky lands near Pleasant Beach. 

Cedar, Jerusalem Road, near the Tolman cottages, 78 inches. This old cedar 
is quite a landmark in the locality and is interesting because it shows by its leaning 
position the effect of the severe winds which prevail on our coast in winter. 



INDEX OF PERSONS 



The following names appear in this book. In several cases one name stands for more than 
one person, and occasionally one person is represented by more than one name. 



Abbott, C. C, 74. Bates 

Adams, Benjamin, 304. 494 

Adams, John Quincy, 440. Bates 

Adams, Samuel, 283, 352. Bates 

Ainslee, Henry, 502. Bates 

Ainslee, John, 424, 482. 524. 

Ainslee, Peter E., 502. Bates 

AUd, Benjamin, 304. 149, 
Alexander, Barton S., 471, 473, 474, 476, 478, Bates 

479, 482. Bates 

Allen, Bozoan, 115, 139. Bates 

Amos, Edward, 275. Bates 

Andrews, Deacon, 276. Bates 
Andrews, Joseph, 108, 109, 120, 150, 270, 276. Bates 

Andrews, Richard, 120. Bates 

Andrews, Thomas, io8, 136, 149, 188. Bates, 

Antoine, Manuel F., 426, 427. Bates 

Antoine, Frank F., 482. Bates 

Appleton, Francis P., 529. Bates 

Arnold, Benedict, 291, 297, 309. Bates 

Arnold, Daniel P., 494. Bates 

Arnold, Edward H., 494. Bates 

Arnold, George, 494. 444. 

Aspinwall, William, 120. Bates 

Atwood, David, 304. Bates 

Austin, Jonas, 139. 405 

533' 

Babcock, Daniel, 507. Bates 

Bacon, Josiah, 402. Bates 
Bacon, William F., 394. 

Bacon, Judah, 326. Bates 

Bailey, Amasa, 388. 422 

Bailey, Caleb, 388, 402. Bates 

Bailey, Cotton, 403. 200 

Bailey, Job, 403, 419. 493 

Bailey, Noah, 355. Bates 

Bailey, Polly, 387. 240 

Bailey, William, 275. Bates 
Baker, Nathaniel, 130, 133, 136, 139, 140, 149. Bates 

Baker, Nicholas, iii, 134, 149. Bates 

Baker, William, 502. Bates 

Bancroft, Major, 271. Bates 

Barber, Joseph, 185. Bates 

Barker, Francis, 252, 276. Bates 

Barker, Elisha, 420. Bates 

Barker, John, 445. Bates 

Barker, Joshua, 276. Bates 

Barnes, Albert F. , 494. Bates 

Barnes, Benjamin, 333. Bates 

Barnes, Cornelius, 275. Bates 

Barnes, Leavit, 403. Bates 

Barnes, John, 355, 502. Bates 

Barnes, Joseph, 294, 344. 458 

Barnes, Otis V., 444. Bates 

Barnes, Thomas, 136, 137, 139, 149. Bates 

Barrett, Lawrence, 320, 399, 529. Bates 

Barron, C. W., 320, 399. Bates 

Bates, Abigail, 275, 387. Bates 

Bates, Abner, 263, 275, 280, 294, 296, 337, 502. 276 

Bates, Adna, 287, 296, 297, 321, 322, 502. 325 
Bates, Ambrose, 294, 296, 297, 298, 299, 301, Bates 

302, 390. Bates 



BeUi, 354, 386, 388, 398, 400, 419, 420, 

495.. 

Benjamin, 149, 162. 

Caleb L., 497. 

Charles S., 43, 51, 166, 330, 517, 523, 

Clement, 108, 109, iii, 134, 136, 139, 
150, 161, 162. 
Cornelius, 298. 
Cyrus H. , 497. 

Daniel, 239, 321, 337, 370, 386, 403. 
David, 214, 229, 238, 258, 280. 
Deborah N., 519. 
Elisha, 263, 275, 287, 304. 
Enos, 344, 388, 403. 
Francis L., 533. 
Frederic, 279, 444. 
George, 354. 
Helen A., 503. 
Henry, 444, 528. 
Isaac, 242, 256. 

James, 150, 161, 162, 256, 263, 287, 
492. 

Jazamiah, 337. 

John, 253, 256, 337, 344, 348, 351, 403, 
419. 424. 427. 432, 433, 445, 498, 501, 

John Warren, 521. 

Jonathan, 246, 276, 287, 293, 297, 304, 
334, 336, 354, 386. 

Jonathan B., 344, 398, 400, 419, 420, 
423, 424, 520. 

Joseph, 149, 183, 184,185, 194, 198, 
239, 246, 263, 276, 289, 292, 325, 386, 

Joshua, 176, 185, 194, 202, 211, 212, 

242, 245, 249, 263, 275, 285, 344, 403. 

Josiah, 287, 298. 

Laban, 337, 344, 523. 

Levi, 293, 296, 393, 519, 521, 533. 

Lincoln, 492. 

Lorenzo, 460, 462, 503. 

Loring, 461, 463, 503, 533. 

Lot Webster, 521, 533. 

Luke, 304. 

Maria, 370. 

Martin, 528. 

Mercy, 387. 

Mordecai, 263, 275, 280, 344. 

Nathaniel, 275, 280, 293, 296. 

Nehemiah, 263. 

Newcomb, 344, 349, 351, 354, 35s, 4S6- 

533- 

Obediah, 337, 344. 

Paul, 345, 370,420. 

Phineas, 337, 344, 388. 

Philander, 521, 533. 

Samuel, 149, 216, 222, 239, 246, 253, 

285, 297, 312, 313, 319, 320, 321, 322, 

326, 327, 336, 337, 354, 441, 456, 523. 

Simeon, 279. 

Solomon, 245, 262, 275. 



554 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



Bates, Sukey, 387. 

Bates, Thomas, 256, 460. 

Bates, Thomas Lincoln, 256. 

Bates, Warren, 439, 520, 527. 

Bates, William, 245, 296, 378, 420. 

Bates, Zealous, 287, 293, 296, 332, 334, 372, 

413. 444. 5?o- . 
Battles, Benjamin, 337. 
Battles, David, 344. 
Battles, Edward, 185, 239, 245, 275. 
Battles, Ephraim, 275, 287. 
Battles, Jared, 287, 293, 296. 
Battles, Joseph, 276, 280, 503. 
Beal, Abel, 276, 292, 344, 383. 
Beal, Abigail, 387. 
Beal, Adam, 275. 
Beal, Albert, 442. 
Beal, Andrew, 250, 304. 
Beal, Benjamin, 263, 276, 310. 
Beal, Caleb, 150, 338, 344. 
Beal, Christopher, 338. 
Beal, Daniel, 265. 
Beal, David, 334, 351, 370, 386. 
Beal, Ebenezer, 244, 265, 269, 276, 277, 278. 
Beal, George, 438, 439, 440, 520. 
Beal, Herbert O., 515. 
Beal, Hezekiah, 334. 
Beal, Jacob, 269, 279, 296. 
Beal, James, 491. 
Beal, Jeremy, 147, 149, 179. 
Beal, John, 135, 139, 149, 179, 196, 214, 246, 

248, 263, 276, 323, 337, 344,346, 355, 386. 
Beal, Jonathan, 236, 242, 263, 276. 
Beal, Joshua, 150, 275, 287, 292. 
Beal, Lazarus, 179, ig^j 215, 239, 240, 258, 

263, 267, 272, 276, 285, 299, 375. 
Beal, Nathaniel, 150. 
Beal, Obediah, 242, 276, 279, 292, 293, 294, 

295, 296, 304- 
Beal, Polly, 387. 
Beal, Robert, 344, 498. 
Beal, Sally, 387. 
Beal, Samuel, 287, 492. 
Beal, Seth, 338. 
Beal, Solomon J., 533. 
Beal, Thomas, 276. 
Beal, William, 501. 
Beauchamp, John, 120. 
Beaunard, Jean Philip, 304. 
Beecher, Lyman, 285. 
Bennett, Charles Frederic, 328, 437, 4S9. 
Beverly, Lennox, 184. 
Bigelow, Albert S., 44, 51. 
Bigelow, Joseph S., 152,515, 524. 
Binney, Spencer, 333. 
Bixby, Abraham, 150. 
Blackmer, Salisbury, 326. 
Blanchard, Edward, 528. 
Blossom, Thomas D., 504. 
Boardman, William, 387. 
Bonney, Elijah, 308. 
Bourne, Charles P., 444. 
Bourne, Elisha, 326. 
Bourne, Elias W., 497. 
Bourne, Eliza, 387. 
Bourne, Ezekiel, 488, 489. 
Bourne, Henry, 312. 
Bourne, Newcomb, 263. 
Bourne, Richard, 471, 477. 
Bourne, Thomas, 18, 275, 285, 291, 292, 334, 

348, 355. 386, 420. 
Bouv^, James H., 524. 
Bowels, John, 304. 
Bowker, Joseph, 428, 431. 



Brackett, Richard, 131, 132. 

Bradbury, Jonathan, 271. 

Bradford, Alden, 274. 

Bradford, George, 444. 

Bradford, William, 90, 122, 124, 126, 130. 

Braman, Grenville D., 515. 

Braman, G. T. W., 527, 529. 

Bremes, Pompey, 276. 

Brennock, Michael, 460, 462, 503. 

Brennock, W. J., 524. 

Bridgham, Charles B., 504. 

Briggs, Abner, 370. 

Briggs, Benjamin, 321, 326. 

Briggs, Elizabeth, 370. 

Briggs, George, 403. 

Briggs, Joseph, 294, 344, 419, 444. 

Briggs, Seth, 298. 

Briggs, Thomas, 337. 

Briggs, V/alter, 132, 133, 235. 

Brown, Amos, 287, 304. 

Brown, Bela, 423. 

Brown, Garvin, 304. 

Brown, Hepsibah C., 387. 

Brown, John, 280, 281, 288, 295, 307, 311, 

312, 360, 361, 364, 365, 394, 506. 
Brown, Nichols, 304. 
Brown, Samuel, 385, 386, 436, 438, 535. 
Brown, Sylvanus, 520. 
Brown, Timothy W., 520. 
Brown, Washington, 529. 
Bryant, Henry, 504. 
Buck, James, 136. 
Buck, William E., 394. 
Buckland, William, 139. 
Bullard, Mr., 394. 
Burbank, Charles, 39. 
Burbank, Ephraim, 344. 
Burbank, John, 205, 214,246,263, 276, 293, 

296. 333.337.344. 365- 
Burbank, Leavit, 338, 344,378. 
Burbank, Robert T., 159, 188, 222, 232, 254, 

440. 
Burbank, Timothy, 338. 
Burgoyne, Gen., 298, 299, 300, 303. 
Burr, Elisha, 275. 
Burr, Isaac, 263, 276, 287, 293. 
Burr, John, 275. 
Burr, Jonathan, 275. 
Burr, Joshua, 263, 276. 
Burr, Samuel, 275. 
Burr, Simon, 136, 139, 149, 150. 
Burr, Thomas, 275. 
Burrage, W. C, 524. 
Burton, Edward, 139. 
Burton, Margaret, 149. 

Cabot, John, 93. 

Cabot, Sebastian, 93. 

Canterbury, Cornelius, 149, 150, 163, 164. 

Carl, William R., 495. 

Carpenter, John, 445. 

Caswell, E. J., 394. 

Charaberlin, Henry, 137, 149, 158. 

Champlain, Samuel de, 94. 

Chapman, William, 136. 

Charles I, II, 126, 140, 145. 

Chatelaine, 385. 

Cheever, Marion, 522. 

Chickatabut, 144. 

Chubbuck, Nathaniel, 149. 

Chubbuck, Thomas, 139, 149. 

Church, Joseph, 149, 150. 

Church, Saraii, 212. 

Church, Thomas, 212. 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



555 



Clapp, Abijah, 263. 

Clapp, Paul, 403. 

Clapp, Thomas, 136. 

Clark, B. C, 482, 524, 529. 

Clark, Calvin, 528. 

Clark, John, 496. 

Clark, Thomas W., 528. 

Cockerum, William, 136. 

Codman, John, 528. 

Cole, William R.,5o5. 

Collier, Bozworth, 294, 296. 

Collier, Christopher, 445. 

Collier, E. Pomeroy, 133, 515, 521. 

Collier, George, 400. 

Collier, Mary, 387. 

Collier, Moses, 147, 150. 

Collier, James, 326, 337, 400, 402, 403, 419, 

427, 490. 
Collier, Sarah, 519. 
Collier (Widow), 139. 
Collier, William, 294. 
Collins, George W., 520. 
Collins, John, 325. 
Connelly, William, 304. 
Connor, Morris, 501. 
Cook, John, 473, 476, 479. 
Cornwallis, Gen., 286, 309, 311, 312. 
Cousens, Charles A. , 443, 444. 
Coiiillard, David J., 496. 
Couillard, William J., 503. 
Crane, Franklin Joseph, 488. 
Creed, John, 344, 403, 405. 
Creed, Levi, 432, 503. 
Creed, William V., 405, 413, 442, 443. 
Crocker, Uriel, 453. 
Crowley, Abraham, 326. 
Crosby, Prof. William O., 22-51. 
Cunningham, Charles, 528. 
Cunningham, Edward, 529. 
Curtis, Robert L., 503. 
Cushing, Abel, 244, 269. 
Cushing, Benjamin, 275, 291-296. 
Cushing, Beza, 275. 
Cushing, Calvin, 279-281, 287. 
Cushing, David, 338. 
Cushing, Daniel, 106, 137, 141-149, 236. 
Cushing, Isaiah, 275. 
Cushing, Henry, 444. 
Cushing, Jacob, 275. 

Cushing, Job, 287, 336, 337, 344, 354, 405, 533. 
Cushing, Joseph, 275. 
Cushing, Peter, 275, 296. 
Cushing, Matthew, 134, 136, 139, 141, 142, 

145, 146, 150, 170. 
Cushing, Samuel, 244,246,248, 257,258,262, 

275. 361, 377. 420. 
Cushing, Solomon, 263, 269, 275. 
Cushing, Stephen, 275. 
Cushing, Theophilus, 270, 275, 333. 
Cushing, Timothy, 276, 296, 312. 
Cutting, Clark, 444. 
Cutter, W. G. , 524. 

Damon, Henry, 419. 

Davenport, Mrs. Geo., 295. 

Davis, Charles F., 496. 

Davis, Joseph R., 498. 

Deane, Henry, 337. 

Decatur, Admiral, 342. 

Dillano, Samuel, 337. 

Dispereau, Nathaniel, 304. 

Dinsmore, John H., 502. 

Doane, Elisha, 261, 277, 314,317,318,320- 

326, 329-333, 338, 348, 384-386, 396, 485, 

525. 53S. 



Doane, Mrs. Elisha, 365. 

Doane, James C, 344, 354,387,400,402,403, 

4°S. 419. 420, 445, 447, 531, 533. 
Doane, Maria, 387, 388. 
Doane, Henry, 344, 427. 
Doane, J. Foster, 485-487. 
Doane, William E., 519. 
Druce, Vincent, 139. 
Dunbar, Elisha, 292. 
Dunbar, Obed, 287. 
Dunbar, Robert, 150. 
Dunster, Samuel K., 490. 

Eames, Anthony, to8, 114, 115, 134, 135, 139, 

Eames, Mark, 137. 

Eddy, William, 423, 424. 

Edwards, Joseph, 431. 

Eldredge, Bani, 402. 

Eldredge, Samuel, 400. 

EKvell, David, 402. 

Endicott, Jane, 519. 

Endicott, John, 123, 124, 126, 130, 140. 

Eunice, George, 427. 

Eunice, Joseph, 427. 

Enos, Manuel, 427. 

Enos, Joseph, 426, 427. 

Everett, Edward, 481, 482. 

Ewell, Gershom, 185, 188. 

Farrar, John, 139, 149, 171, 183-185, 194. 

Farrar, Thomas, 77, 370. 

Fearing, Elijah, 276. 

Fearing, Israel, 149. 

Fearing, Thomas, 332. 

Fearing, John, 112, 139, 149, 275. 

Ferguson, Bill, 439. 

Field, Frank A., 504. 

Fillmore, George H., 394. 

Fish, George A., 496. 

Fish, Joseph, 494. 

Fisher, Joshua, 150-155, 532. 

Fitts, Calvin R., 507. 

Flint, Jacob, 96, 193, 194, 316, 318, 334, 352, 

367, 369, 506. 
Flint, Willard, 355. 
Foulsam, John, 136, 142. 
Fowle, Rev. John, 359, 506. 
Fox, Capt. Philip, 325. 
Franklin, John, 185. 
Fratus, Joseph E. , 427. 
French, William B., 394. 
Fuller, Warren, 491. 

Gage, Gen., 284, 288. 

Gannett, Matthew, 167. 

Gannett, Freeman, 419. 

Gannett, Seth, 275. 

Gates, Stephen, 139. 

Gales, Gen., 299, 300, 301. 

George III, 282, 283, 303. 

Gerrish, Col., 271. 

Gibbs, Henry, 137, 149. 

Gibbs, Thomas O. S., 497. 

Gill, Thomas, 137, 149. 

Gilman, Edward, 136. 

Gookin, Daniel, 79-84. 

Godfrey, Zebina, 424. 

Gould, Edward, 139. 

Gray, Prof. Asa, 62. 

Grant, Charles, 529. 

Groce, Leander W., 491. 

Gross, Charles A., 497, 524,533. 535- 

Grozer, John, 326. 

Guy, Thomas, 304. 



556 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



Hall, Abraham, 344, 400, 427. 

Hall, Allen, 388. 

Hall, Abner,4o3. 

Hall, George, 338, 344, 402, 403, 423, 424. 

Hall, James, 216, 263, 276, 285, 286, 290, 293, 

307, 310, 336. 
Hall, Isaac, 344, 403, 422-424. 
Hall, Mary, 387. 
Hall, Henry, 413. 

Hall, Samuel, 209, 400, 403, 419, 499. 
Hancock, Horace, 520. 
Hancock, John, 307,352. 
Hammond, Thomas, 108, in, 134, 139. 
Hatherly, Timothy, 120, 121, 133. 
Hawke, Matthew, 136, 139, 141, 150, 210. 
Hawkins, Capt. John, 93. 
Harlow, Francis, 169. 
Harris, Thomas, 337, 344. 
Harris, James, 337. 
Harris, William, 496. 
Harrington, Nathan, 394. 
Harrington, Col. Samuel, 394. 
Hatch, Joshua, 419. 
Hardwick, Henry C, 492. 
Haskell, Alfred, 496. 
Harmon, David, 298. 
Hayden, Thomas O., 494. 
Hay den, Solomon J., 502. 
Hayden, John G., 492, 502. 
Hayden, Deborah, 387. 
Hayden, Joseph, 388. 
Hayward, Gideon, 276, 278, 281, 287. 
Hayward, Samuel, 344, 345. 
Heath, William, 123. 
Hersey, James, 149, 210, 211. 
Hersey, William, 134, 139, 150, 166. 
Hersey, Joshua, 210, 211, 270. 
Hersey, Jacob, 276. 
Hersey, David, 298. 
Hett, Thomas, 136. 
Hewitt, Ephraim, 149. 
Hewitt, Thomas, 136, 139, 142, 150. 
Henry, Harrison, 494. 
Hervey, James, 393, 394. 
Higginson, Waldo, 524. 
Hilliard (Widow), 139, 150. 
Higgins, Asa, 326. 
Hobart, Edmund, 102, 103, 108, no, 114, 

139, 149, 170. 
Hobart, John Jacob, 241. 
Hobart, Joshua, 103, 117, 130, 133, 134, 142- 

149, 170, 173. 
Hobart, Thomas, 103, 139, 149. 
Hobart, Josiah, 150. 
Hobart, Peter, 104, 108, 115, 116, 117, 118, 

139, 140, 149, 166, 196. 
Hobart, Nehemiah, 196, 198, 239, 241, 249, 

255. 357. 369, 506. 
Homes, Henry, 370. 
Horswell, Francis, 185. 
HoUingsworth, Zachary T. , 236, 524. 
Holbrook, Samuel, 374, 375. 
Howe, Gen., 293. 
Howe, John C., 17, 528. 
Howe, Oliver H., Dr., 49, 242. 
Hud.son, Ebenezer, 217. 
Hudson, Frost, 390. 
Hudson, Asa, 345. 
Hudson, Joseph, 250, 276, 292. 
Hudson, Daniel, 308. 
Hudson, Hezekiah, 276, 292. 
Hudson, Elijah, 296. 
Hudson, Thomas, 76. 
Hughes, John, 150, 246. 



Humphrey, Anna, 276. 
Humphrey, George, 287. 
Humphrey, Jonathan, 338. 
Humphrey, ftlicah, 281. 
Humphrey, Peter, 228. 
Humphrey, Thomas, 228, 229. 
Hunt, S., 431. 
Hutchinson, J., 274. 
Hutchinson, Thomas, 267. 
Hyde, Henry D., 529. 
Hyland, Isaiah, 419. 

Ibrook, Richard, 136. 
Ide, George E. W., 504. 
Ingram, David, 93. 

Jackson, Charles T., 529. 

Jacob, Benjamin, 275, 287, 294. 

Jacob, Nicholas, 103, 108, 109, in, 114, 130, 

133, 134, 135. 138-142- 
Jacob, John, 133, 141, 142, 145, 150, 160, lOg, 

170, 176, 183, 185, 193, 196-200, 202, 206, 

222, 239, 244, 248, 269, 440, 483. 
Jacobs, C. F., 394. 
Jacobs, Joseph, 150. 
Jacobs, Samuel, 172, 209. 
James, Christopher, 327, 332, 334, 384-386, 

390. 438. 
James, Ebenezer, 344. 
James, Eleazer, 287, 344, 348, 353. 
James, Elijah, 275, 387. 
James, Francis, 136, 139, 149, 253. 
lames, Galen, 312, 334, 338, 383. 
James, Hannah, 334, 388. 
James, John B., 344. 
James, Josiah, 344. 
James, Philip, 136, 244, 263, 275. 
James, Thomas, 185, 188, 194, 198, 214, 246 

253, 256, 276, 344. 
James, Samuel, 181, 255. 
Jason, Joseph, 426. 
Jenkins, Betsy, 387. 
Jenkins, Luther, 419, 460. 
Jenkins, Sally, 387. 
Jepson, Micah, 246, 361. 
Johnson, Humphrey, 147, 150. 
Johnson, Thomas, 139. 
Johnson, William B., 484. 
Jones, Eliphalet, 529. 
Jones, Joseph, 149. 
Jones, Robert, 139, 150. 
Joslin, Abraham, 139. 
Joslin, Thomas, 139. 
Joseph, Antoine, 427. 
Josselyn, John, 88. 
Joy, Abner, 212, 276, 325, 326. 
Joy, Amos, 212, 245, 262. 
Joy, Asa, 338, 344. 
Joy, Benjamin, 296. 

Joy, Caleb, 212, 263, 275, 279, 293, 296, 338. 
Joy, Deacon, 275. 
Joy, Elisha, 298, 337 
Joy, John, 364. 
Joy, Jared, 284, 287. 
Joy, Joseph, 150, 338. 
Joy, Melzer, 287, 304. 
Joy, Prince, 200, 242, 245, 256, 361. 
Joy, Thomas, 149. 

Kane, Thomas, 496. 
Keating, John, 502. 
Kent, Abel, 263, 275, 285, 291, 297, 314, 315, 

337. 348, 382, 398, 400, 525. 
Kent, Ebenezer, 185, 198, 212, 242, 245, 256. 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



557 



Kent, John, 456. 

Kent, Polly, 387. 

Kent, Sally, 387. 

Kilburn, William, 400. 

Kilburn, Aquila, 444. 

Kilby, Gushing, 246, 263, 275, 3S0. 

Kilby, John, 246, 275, 287. 

Kilby, Richard, 296. 

Kilby, Samuel, 292, 296. 

King, Elizabeth, 241. 

King, Manuel, 444. 

Kneeland, Samuel, 529. 

Knight, W. H., 394. 

Knowlton, F. W., 394. 

Knox, Henry, 293. 

Lambert, Henry, 292. 

Lambert, Isaac, 344. 

Lane, Andrew, 136, 149. 

Lane, Ebenezer, 276, 306, 307. 

Lane, Eli, 294. 

Lane, George, 139, 149, 276. 

Lane, Josiah, 149. 

Lane, Matthew, 137. 

Langley, John, 150. 

Langer, Richard, 137. 

Lazell, John, 139, 149, 235. 

Lazell, Stephen, 184, 185, 246. 

Lawrence, Amos A., 533. 

Lawrence, Josiah, 420, 423, 445, 520. 

Lawrence, George A., 419, 520. 

Lawrence, Captain, 342. 

Lawrence, Oakes, 427, 484. 

Lawrence, Thaddeus, 337, 344, 370, 413, 456, 

458, 525- 
Lathrop, Ihomas, 494. 
Leavitt, Margaret, 185. 
Leavitt, John, 136, 139, 144, 146, 149, 275, 

332- . , 

Leavitt, Nehemiah, 361, 378. 
Leavitt, Joshua, 275. 
Leavitt, Jacob, 333. 
Leavitt, Martha, 276. 
Leavitt, Elisha, 276. 
Leighton, Robert F., 394. 
Leithead, George F., 489. 
Leonard, Henry, 394. 
Lewis, Jacob, 332. 

Lewis, John, 210, 313, 314, 318-326, 385. 
Lewis, Susanna, 318, 386, 387, 388. 
Lewis, Mary, 521. 
Lewis, Betsy, 388. 
Lincoln, Abraham, Pres., 167, 254, 483-485, 

500. 
Lincoln, Abraham, 275, 294. 
Lincoln, Benjamin, 149, 176, 236, 244, 270, 

273, 274, 276, 286, 299, 307, 309, 340. 
Lincoln, Caleb, 275. 
Lincoln, Alfred W., 498. 
Lincoln, Allen, 290, 296. 
Lincoln, Cummins, 337. 
Lincoln, Christopher, 326. 
Lincoln, Daniel, 149, 165-167, 169-177, 183- 
188, 193-200, 208, 239-242, 246, 258, 262, 
278, 378, 492, 529. 
Lincoln, Ebenezer, 275. 
Lincoln, Elizabeth, 165, 172, 177. 
Lincoln, Enoch, 276. 

Lincoln, Ephraim, 276, 292, 296, 334, 390. 
Lincoln, Elisha, 246, 276, 338, 344, 386. 
Lincoln, Ezekiel, 276, 372, 428. 
Lincoln, Francis, 78, 328, 344, 345, 361. 
Lincoln, Francis M., 428, 431. 
Lincoln, George, 184, 219, 249, 33S, 344. 



Lincoln, Galen, 287. 

Lincoln, Hezekiah, 165, 177, 185, 194, 256, 

263, 276, 333. 
Lincoln, Isaac, 79, 236, 245, 250, 254, 257, 

258, 262, 267, 274, 275, 285, 291, 297, 364. 
Lincoln, Isaiah, 78, 337, 340, 344, 345, 349, 

350. 4°5. 428, 431- 
Lincoln, Jacob, 245, 250, 275. 
Lincoln, James, 167, 223, 307. 
Lincoln, Jerome, 287, 296, 305, 334, 336, 354, 

365, 383. , . ^ 
Lincoln, Jedaiah, 276. 
Lincoln, Josiah, 276. 
Lincoln, Joshua, 149. 

Lincoln, Joseph, 173, 338, 344.345. 520, 524. 
Lincoln, John, 326, 403, 460. 
Lincoln, Lazarus, 298. 
Lincoln, Luther, 402. 
Lincoln, Louis N., 533. 
Lincoln, Martin, 354, 355, 520. 
Lincoln, Matthew, 276. 
Lincoln, Merriel, 387. 
Lincoln, Mary, 370. 
Lincoln, Mordecai, 167-169, 174, 183, 185- 

188, 245,250, 251, 254, 263, 275, 483, 
Lincoln, Moses, 167. 
Lincoln, Obediah, 165, 184, 185, 263, 275, 

278, 291, 312, 326, 344. 
Lincoln, Persis (Tower), 290. 
Lincoln, Priscilla, 167, 370. 
Lincoln, Richard, 496. 
Lincoln, Samuel, 149, 337. 
Lincoln, Sarah, 185, 334. 
Lincoln, Solomon, 96, 118, i85. 
Lincoln, Susanna, 239. 
I,incoln, Silas, 344. 
Lincoln, Stephen, 150, 276, 493, 497. 
Lincoln, Thomas, 103, 136, 137, 138, 139, 149, 

150, 173, 246, 263, 275, 400. 
Lincoln, Uriah, 328. 
Lincoln, William, 337, 344. 
Lincoln, Zenas, 194, 297, 298, 345, 372, 390. 
Lindsay, Alexander, 492. 
Litchfield, Benjamin, 419, 428. 
I-itchfield, Caleb, 325. 
Litchfield, Charles, 344. 
Litchfield, Geo. A., 491. 
Litchfield, Festus, 337, 344, 388. 
Litchfield, Harvey, 403. 

Litchfield, Isaiah, 47, 338, 344, 349, 350, 403. 
Litchfield, Joseph W., 502. 
Litchfield, Josiah, 188. 
Litchfield, James, 262, 275, 293. 
Litchfield, Joshua, 428, 429, 431. 
Litchfield, Leonard, 402. 
Litchfield, Loring, 236. 
Litchfield, Lothrop, 337. 
Litchfield, Luther, 428, 431. 
Litchfield, Meshech, 428. 
Litchfield, Noah, 337. 
Litchfield, Norton, 402. 
Litchfield, Samuel, 403. 
Litchfield, William, 419. 
Little, James, 387. 
Little, Jedidiah, 437, 438, 439. 
Little, Lydia, 387. 
Lobdon, Nicholas, 137, 292. 
Long, Jeremiah, 423. 
Lopans, Roscoe G., 504. 
Loring, Daniel, 456. 
Loring, Jacob, 184. 
Loring, Jonathan, 296. 
Loring, Joshua, 329. 
Loring, Josiah, 149. 



558 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



Loring, Thomas, 109, 275. 

Lothrop, Anselm, 321, 326, 334, 400. 

Lothrop, Bethia, 370. 

Lothrop, Caleb, 387, 419, 423, 424, 427, 445, 

520, 533. 
Lothrop, Clara, 387. 
Lothrop, Daniel, 345, 423, 460, 461, 462, 520, 

533- 
Lothrop, Drusilla, 394. 
Lothrop, John, 326, 334, 386. 
Lothrop, John Jacob, 321, 326. 
Lothrop, Loring, 438. 
Lothrop, Peter, 321, 322, 326, 337, 33^. 344" 

349- 354, 355. 386, 399, 400, 403, 419. 
Lothrop, Thomas, 262, 275, 279, 280, 281, 

285,286,291,334-338,388. 
Luce, Matthew, 482, 529. 
Ludkin, William, 136. 
Lyons, David, 500. 

Magoon, Elias, 276. 

Magoon, Thatcher, 424. 

Mann, George, 326. 

Manning, F. H., 482. 

Mansfield, John, 149. 

Mansfield, Joseph, 275. 

Mansfield, Jeremiah, 375. 

Manson, Capt. Nehemiah, 313. 

Manuel, John L., 492. 

Malbon, Micajah, 520. 

Marble, Abner, 344. 

Marble, David, 212, 263, 275. 

Marble, Elijah, 444. 

Marble, Joseph, 304. 

Marble, John, 249, 344. 

Marble, Nathaniel, 212. 

Marble, Noah, 275. 

Marsh, George, 139. 

Marsh, Onesipherus, 149, 150. 

Marsh, Thomas, 149. 

Martin, Antoine, 426. 

Martin, Frank F., 427. 

Martin, Joseph F., 426. 

Mason, John, 150. 

Mather, Cotton, 104. 

Mayo, William, 520. 

McCloud, Joseph, 423. 

McFarlin, Perthe, 150, 161, 196. 

McNeil, William, 325. 

Merrill, Noah, 292. 

Merritt, Elisha, 322, 400, 402, 419. 

Merritt, Martin, 402. 

Merritt, Seth, 275. 

Metcalf, Robert, 394. 

Minot, Leonard, 488. 

Minot, Levi L., 496, 

Montcalm, General, 280. 

Moore, Martin, 507. 

Morey, George T., 493. 

Morey, Oliver D., 492. 

Morgan, John, 426. 

Morton, Thomas, 90. 

Morris, William, 400, 403. 

Morse, William H., 496. 

Munnice, Joseph R., 502. 

Murphy, Thomas, 502. 

Nash, David, 400. 

Neal, Abigail, 275. 

Neal, John, 344, 345, 403. 

Neal, Jonathan, 245, 262. 

Neal, Joseph, 287. 

Newcomb, Warren, 502. 

Nichols, Aaron, 334, 338, 344, 390, 456. 



Nichols, Bela, 287, 304, 310. 

Nichols, Briton, 298, 308. 

Nichols, Caleb, 287, 304, 331-336, 344, 354, 

365.372,386,390,398, 400,427, 435, 436, 
Nichols, Catherine, 276. [520, 525, 533. 

Nichols, Daniel, 167, 276, 285, 287, 296. 
Nichols, David, 308, 337, 344, 345. 
Nichols, Elias, 344. 

Nichols, Elizabeth, 165, 167, 177, 242, 312. 
Nichols, Edward, 516. 
Nichols, Hannah, 387. 
Nichols, Israel, 172, 183-185, 209, 212, 213, 

228, 241, 275, 386, 525. 
Nichols, Isaac, 344. 
Nichols, James H., 51. 
Nichols, Jazaniah, 213, 262, 276, 375. 
Nichols, John, 338, 344, 386, 435, 436, 524. 
Nichols, Joseph, 390. 
Nichols, Lois, 387. 
Nichols, Lot, 334. 
Nichols, Levi, 338, 344, 355, 442- 
Nichols, Micah, 263, 275,279, 280, 281, 292. 
Nichols, Naaman, 308, 332, 386. 
Nichols, Nathaniel, 165, 172, 185, 229, 239, 

277. 287, 310, 334, 336, 338, 344, 354, 376, 

377. 3S6, 455- 
Nichols, Noah, 246, 263,276, 279, 298,304, 

310,336. 
Nichols, Obediah, 217, 328, 338. 
Nichols, Paul, 337. 
Nichols, Peter, 287, 334. 
Nichols, Polly, 387. 
Nichols, Roger, 228. 
Nichols, Susanna, 387. 

Nichols, Thomas, 139, 149, 216, 217,263, 276. 
Nichols, Warren, 344. 
Nickerson, Elijah, 337, 351, 426. 
Nickerson, George, 460, 462, 524, 533. 
Norton, Capt. John, 210. 
Nott, Dawes, 501. 

Oakes, Benjamin F., 490. 

Oakes, Haugh, 287. 

Oakes, Joshua, 244, 288. 

Oakes, Josiah, 287. 

Oakes, Levi, 308, 309, 337, 345. 

Oakes, Samuel, 288, 312. 

Oakes, Urian, 263, 275, 279, 285, 325. 

Orcutt, Ebenezer, 244, 246, 275, 287. 

Orcutt, Ephraim, 287. 

Orcutt, Hosea, 263, 279, 344, 400, 403. 

Orcutt, Ignatius, 275, 279, 293. 

Orcutt, John, 185, 194, 198, 202,244,364,501. 

Orcutt, Luke, 276, 287, 294. 

Orcutt, Samuel, 211, 212, 248, 375. 

Orcutt, Thomas, 185. 

Orcutt, Warren, 419. 

Osgood, Rev. Joseph, 236, 255, 366, 367, 391, 

431, 436, 449, 506, 508, 514, 517. 521- 
Otis, Abigail, 388. 
Otis, Howland, 400. 
Otis, Isaac, 240. 
Otis, James, 281. 
Otis, John, 135, 139, 150. 

Packard, Alpheus, 337. 
Page, John, 137. 
Palmer, Alonzo L., 496. 
Palmer, John, 139. 
Park, William, 123. 
Parker, John, in, 413. 
Parker, Samuel, 137. 
Parker, William, 528. 
Parkman, Francis, 278, 280. 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



559 



Payson, William, 337. 
Peck, Joseph, 1 11, 117. 
Peck, Simon, 149, 162. 
Peirce, Michael, 136, 137, 150, 160. 
Pelby, Forrester A., 486-488. 
Perkins, Mr., 394, 529. 
Peters, Edward D., 529. 
Phillips, Sarah, 275. 
Phinney, Isaac, 494. 
Phinney, Seth, 337, 345. 
Phippeny, David, 136, 137. 
Phipps, H. G. O., 393, 506. 
Pickett, Aaron, 507. 
Pitt, William, 282. 
Pitts, Edmond, in, 139, 149. 
Pitts, William, 186. 
Poole, Amos L., 490. 
Powers, Henry, 502. 

Pratt, Aaron, 173-176, 181, 185,188,196,212, 
231,239,241, 243, 245, 249, 250, 258, 275, 
293i 312. 326, 344. 380, 400, 441. 
Pratt, Benjamin, 175, 337. 
Pratt, Betsey, 387. 
Pratt, Caleb, 288, 293, 296, 345. 
Pratt, Charles A., 493. 
Pratt, Charles H., 489. 
Pratt, David, 337. 
Pratt, Elijah, 324, 476. 
Pratt, Ezekiel, 337, 355. 
Pratt, Gershom, 338, 386. 
Pratt, Gustavus P., 501. 
Pratt, Harriot, 522. 
Pratt, Henry, 337, 344, 444, 445- 
Pratt, Ira B., 59, 76. 
Pratt, Isaac, 444. 
Pratt, Jacob, 337, 345. 
Pratt, Jail us, 370. 
Pratt, James, 520, 523. 
Pratt, Job, 337,344, 345. 
Pratt, John, 243, 263, 275, 279, 327, 337, 338, 

354,372,386,441,509,520. 
Pratt, Jonathan, 164, 212, 242, 245, 262, 275. 
Pratt, Lot W.,520. 
Pratt, Marshall, 243. 
Pratt, Minot, 520. 
Pratt, Moses, 337. 
Pratt, Nichols, 419, 502, 520. 
Pratt, Paul, 393, 522, 533. 
Pratt, Peter, 345, 388, 400. 
Pratt, Phineas, 99, 173. 
Pratt, Robert B., 173, 504. 
Pratt, Sarah, 241, 521, 522. 
Pratt, Samuel, 386-390, 520. 
Pratt, Southward, 337, 344, 387. 
Pratt, Thomas, 263, 275, 294, 326, 337, 383, 

402. 
Pratt, William, 423, 497. 

Prentice, Henry, 337, 344, 346. 

Prichard, John, 275, 294, 296, 297. 

Prichard, Price, 263, 279. 

Prichard, Theodore, 47. 

Prichard, Oliver, 275, 288. 

Prichard, Richard, 288. 

Prince, John, 137, 150. 

Proctor, John C, 370. 

Prouty, Alexander, 442. 

Prouty, Andrew H., 432. 

Prouty, Bardin A., 492. 

Prouty, George H., 491. 

Puffer, Rev. Stephen, 505, 508. 

Putnam, Henry G., 502. 

Randall, William, 497. 
Ray, James, 185. 



Reed, Rev. F. A., 507, 508. 
Remington, Wm. H., 496. 
Revere, Paul, 283, 365. 
Rich, Zaccheus, 471, 524. 
Richards, John J., 493. 
Richardson, Alva, 520. 
Richardson, Henry, 428. 
Richardson, Joseph, 503. 
Richardson, Thomas, 528. 
Ripley, Charles, 245, 263, 281. 
Ripley, Edward F., 515. 
Ripley, John, 149, 178. 
Ripley, Martin T., 491. 
Ripley, Nehemiah, 528. 
Ripley, William, 136, 139. 
Rogers, Elkanah, 423. 
Rogers, Thomas, 400. 
Rooney, James, 501. 
Russell, Hon. Thomas, 118, 344. 
Rust, Henry, 108. 

Salvador, Manuel E., 482. 
Savage, Rev. Jno. W., 507. 
Sears, Geo. O., 529. 
Sewall, Geo. W., 497. 
Shaw, Rev. Josiah C., 318, 366, 367, 506. 
Shaw, Robert B., 491. 
Shay, James, 490, 494. 
Sherley, James, 120. 
Silvia, Frank, 427. 
Silsbee, Nathaniel D., 529. 
Simmons, Eaton, 298. 
Simpson, Oliver E., 485, 486. 
Skeath, John, 150. 
Smith, Francis, 139. 
Smith, George, 444. 
Smith, Henry, in, 134, 136. 
Smith, Capt. John, 25, 78, 93, 95, 97, 98, 102. 
Smith, John, 144, 147, 149, 427. 
Smith, Joseph, 423, 445, 461, 463, 503. 
Smith, Phineas, 325. 
Smith, Ralph, 114, 158. 
Smith, Thomas, 438, 533. 
Smith, William L., 501. 

Snow, Ephraim, 326, 341, 401, 427, 458, 460. 
Snow, Henry, 229, 326, 400, 402, 403, 445, 
458. 

Snow, Jane, 519. 

Snow, Samuel, 400. 

Snow, Samuel T., 413, 529. 

Sohier, Wm. D., 208, 528. 
Souther, Annie A., 318 

Souther, Caleb, 419. 

Souther, Daniel, 246, 276: 

Souther, Harry W., 535, 

Souther, Job, 338. 

Souther, Joseph, 185, 187, 245, 272, 275, 288. 

.Souther, Laban, 417, 423, 424, 427, 445, 453. 

Souther, Nathan, 345. 

Southward, Oliver, 280. 

Southwick, Henry, 326. 

Southworth, Theophilus, 337. 

Spear, Rev. Samuel, 195, 196. 

Spear, Thomas T., 493. 

.Spooner, George, 492. 

Sprague, Anthony, 149. 

Sprague, Jacob, 275. 

Sprague, William, 139, 149. 

Standish, Miles, 99. 

Stanley, Arthur, 394. 

Staples, William, 304. 

Stephenson, Collins, 338. 

Stephenson, Elisha, 288, 296. 

Stephenson, James, 332. 



56o 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



Stephenson, Jerome, 275, 280, 281, 285, 296. 
Stephenson, Jesse, 245, 275, 285. 
Stephenson, John, 228, 240, 245, 257, 262, 

267, 275, 277, 337,382. 
Stephenson, Luke, 288, 296, 298, 308. 
Stephenson, Lusitanus, 275, 281, 296. 
Stephenson, Luther, 275, 281, 321, 326, 337, 

345, 386, 398, 400, 402, 456, 458, 459, 460. 
Stephenson, Solon, 263, 275, 280. 
Stephenson, Thomas, 275, 382, 387. 
Stetson, Benjamin, 263, 28S. 
Stetson, George, 413. 
Stetson, James, 239, 240, 263. 
Stetson, Morgan B., 170, 207, 533. 
Stetson, William, 217,345, 525. 
Stevens, Rev. Moody A., 507. 
Stockbridge, Alexander, 337, 387. 
Stockbridge, Benjamin, 240. 
Stockbridge, Penelope, 387. 
Stockbridge, Samuel, 315, 321, 322, 326, 387, 

420. 
St. John, Joseph, 535. 
Stoddard, Anna, 370. 
Stoddard, Canterbury, 227, 263. 
Stoddard, David, 338, 345, 349. 
Stoddard, Daniel, 150. 
Stoddard, Elijah, 326. 
Stoddard, Enoch, 263, 403. 
Stoddard, George, 444, 519. 
Stoddard, Gezaiah, 184. 
Stoddard, James, 263, 275, 284, 287, 288, 

292, 294, 304, 321, 322, 336, 354, 387, 398- 

400, 420-423, 520, 525. 
Stoddard, Jeremiah, 229, 265, 276. 
Stoddard, John, no, 137, 149, 150. 
Stoddard, Lincoln, 337. 
Stoddard, Lot, 388, 445. 
Stoddard, Matthew, 276. 
Stoddard, Samuel, 149, 150, 185, 504. 
Stoddard, Simeon, 275, 293, 296, 312. 
Stoddard, Stephen, 185, 198, 200, 212, 215, 

228, .=39, 242, 245, 248, 256, 269, 276, 291, 

294, 296, 307. 
Stoddard, Thomas, 341, 345, 350, 370, 447, 

448. 
Stoddard, William, 287, 420. 
Stoddard, Zenas, 345, 370,489, 533, 535, 536. 
Story, Abel, 419. 

Stoughton, Israel, 123, 124, 126, 130. 
Stowell, Adam, 387. 
Stowell, Samuel, 149. 
Stowell, Seth, 298. 
Strange, George, 136. 
Studley, Andrew J., 496. 
Studley, Ezekiel B., 524. 
.Studley, Dawes, 345, 520. 
Studley, Lewis, 345. 
Sutton, John, 142, 288, 313, 326. 
Sweeney, James M., 497. 

Thaxter, John, 144, 145, 149, 169,244. 

Thaxter, Joseph, 378. 

Thaxter, Samuel, 150. 

Thaxter, Thomas, in, 136, 139, 

Thayer, Ancil P., 496. 

Thayer, William F., 485, 486, 487. 

Thayer, Willie F., 501. 

Thomas, Frank, 427. 

Thomas, John, 419. 

Thoreau, Henry D., 464. 

Thorndyke, Artemas, 444. 

Thorndyke, Septimus, 445. 

Thorn, Reuben, 288, 304. 

Thome, Joseph, 185. 



Tilden, Amos K., 502. 

Tilden, Caleb F. B., 493. 

Tilden, Charles F. , 524, 533. 

Tilden, Eustis W., 49/5. 

Tilden, Joseph, 121. 

Tilton, Mr., 385. 

Tolman, Henry, 529. 

Torrey, Sally, 387. 

Torrey, Capt. William, 131, 132. 

Tower, Abraham, 284, 287, 321, 322, 325, 326, 

333,387, 398-400, 402, 403, 533. 
Tower, Abraham H., 178, 253, 318, 354, 355, 

362, 405, 419, 420, 423, 424, 427, 445, 524, 

533- 
Tower, Acten, 275. 
Tower, Alvan, 490. 
Tower, Asa, 338, 345. 

Tower, Bethia (Resolution), 243, 290, 306, 
^387. 
Tower, Daniel, 43, 48, 239, 243, 245, 246, 262, 

263, 276, 387, 525. 
Tower, David, 246, 251, 354, 355, 520. 
Tower, Edward, 526, 535. 
Tower, Edward E., 52, 73, 422, 424, 521, 525. 
Tower, Elisha, 245, 278. 
Tower, Elizabeth, 177, 214. 
Tower, Mrs. Fannie H., 521. 
Tower, Francis C, 492. 
Tower, George B. N., 492. 
Tower, Hezekiah, 177, 178, 185, 205, 214, 246, 

251, 254,278. 
Tower, Ibrook, 160, 171, 176, 178, 183, 185, 

196, 248, 253, 529. 
Tower, Isaac, 263, 276, 288, 289, 293, 296, 

496. 
Tower, James, 460. 
Tower, Jesse, 288. 

Tower, Job, 246, 263, 276, 279, 355, 520. 
Tower, Joanna (Widow), 276. 
Tower, John, 136, 139, 141, 142, 149, 177, 

185, 263, 276, 292, 493. 
Tower, Levi, 52,287, 293, 296, 318, 319, 321- 

326, 332-337, 343, 345, 350, 354, 372, 385. 

387, 390, 398, 400-403, 442, 445, 496. 
Tower, Margaret, 177. 
Tower, Newcomb B., 533. 
Tower, Nichols, 338, 345, 348, 354, 355, 370, 

398, 400, 402, 419, 420, 423, 427, 445, 456, 

458-461, 476, 524, 533. 
Tower, Obediah, 294. 
Tower, Patty, 387. 
Tower, Prichard, 263, 275. 
Tower, Robert, 278. 
Tower, Shadrach, 246, 280. 
Tower, Thomas, 496, 519. 
Tower, Gen. Zealous B., 486, 488. 
Towle, Joseph M., 491. 
Treat, John A., 493, 494. 
Treat, S. Franklin, 493. 
Treat, Nathaniel, 17, 413, 415, 471. 
Tuck, Jacob, 393, 394. 
Tucker, Ann, 149. 
Tucker, John, 139, 149. 
Turner, Henry J., 520, 533. 
Turner, Job, 315, 321, 322, 387. 
Turner, John B., 322, 337. 
Turner, Nancy, 387. 
Turner, Perez, 431. 
Turner, Sophia, 387. 
Turner, Thomas, in. 
Tuttle, Henry, 108, ni, 112. 
Tyler, John, 528. 

Underwood, Joseph, 134, 136, 139. 



INDEX OF PERSONS. 



;6i 



Underwood, Thomas, io8. 
Upton, E. C., 520. 

Valine, Manuel P., 427. 
Veale, William, 63, 217. 
Vin;U, Cliarles A., 497- 
Vinal, Clitus, 338, 345- 
Vinal, Elijah, 198. 
Vinal, Israel C, 444, 503- 
Vinal, Howard, 402 
Vinal, Lusitanus, 337. 
Vinal, Sophia, 387. 

Wade, George, 217. 

Wallace, Ezekiel, 345, 35°, 400- 

Wallace, Ezra, 403. 

Wallace, Mordecai, 528. 

Ward, Samuel, 108. 

Ward, Henry, 149. 

Warrick, Hezekiah, 276. 

Warrick, Jesse, 276, 288. 

Warrick, John, i?6. 

Warrick, Laban, 217, 337. 

Washington, Gen. George, 286, 288. 289-293 

298, 309. 335. 3 6, 3"- 
Webster, Daniel, 4, 449, 520, 52S. 
Welch, Charles A., 524- 
Wells, Charles K., 4^6. 
Wentworth, Edward E., 504. 
Weston, Thomas, 99 
Wheelwright, Andrew C., 528. 
Wheelwright, Caroline, 528. 
Wheelwright, Edward, 44, 164, 277, 528. 
Wheelwright, Gershom, 288, 296, 337, 345- 
Wheelwright, Henry A., 528. 
Wheelwright, John, 275, 277, 279, 314. 32 = 

39° 
Wheelwright, Joseph P., 345- 
Wbeelwrial\t, Lewis I.., 502. 
Wheelwriizht, Micah, 337. 
Wheelwright. Martin, 428. 
Wheelwright, Philip, 337, 345- 
Wheelwright, Sarah, 528. 
Whitcorab, David, 337, 345- 
Whitcomb, Israel, 242, 245, 262, 263, 275. 
Whitcomb, Jacob, 370. 
Whitcomb, Job, 243, 263, 275, 293. 
Whitcomb, Joseph, 243, 263, 275, 383. 390. 
Whitcomb, Lot, 263, 275, 293. 
Whitcomb, Noah, 400. 
Whitcomb, Thomas, 520. 
White, Thomas, 338. 
Whitney, Henry M., 59. 
Whiton, Enoch, 180. 



Whiton, Francis 150. 

Whiton, James, 136, 139 

Whiton, John, 184. 

Whittier, Charles, 492, 495- 

Whittier, Ueavitt, 495. 

Whittier, William, 492, 495- 

Whitlington, Alfred, 427, 520. 

Whittington, Hiram, 498. 

Whittington, Ophelia, 519. 

Whittington, William, 337, 344. 387. 4°°. 

524- 
Wilder, Edward, 136, 150. 
WiUard, Charles H., 427,533, 535- 
Willard, Frank, 394. 
Wilbur, Otis S., 504. 
Willcutt, Andrew. 403. 
Willcutt, Elbridge, 489. 
Willcutt, Hannah, 334- 
Willcutt, Jesse, 275. 
Willcutt, lob, 297. 
Willcutt, Joel, 325, 328, 332-334. 365. 372, 

437,455,458.461,507.525.535- 
Willcutt, John, 212, 245, 262,275, 296, 312, 

334, 338, 344- 
Wiflcutt, Joseph, 276, 292, 504, 382, 503. 
Willcutt, Lewis, 420, 520. 
Willcutt, Lyman D., 497- 
Willcutt, Philip, 185, 212, 245. 
Willcutt, Thomas, 308, 333, 345- 
Willcutt, Wallace, 496. 
Willcutt, Warren, 520. 
Williams, Alexander, 289, 529. 
Williams, Andrew W., 489. 
Williams, John, 445. 
Williams, Roger, 86, 92. 
Williams, Mrs. T. B., 529. 
Williston, Charles H., 496. - 
Wiiliston, Thomas, 494. 
Wilson, David. 423, 445- 
W'ilson, George, 185, 186, 219. 
Wilson, John, 350, 403. 445- 
Winslow, Edward, 84, 89, 122-120, 130. 
Winslow, Josiah, 132. 
Winthrop, John, 116-118, 140- 
Wood, General, 280, 281. 
Wood, Alfred F., 428, 431. 
Wood, Andros, 441. 
Wood, Osborne, 520. 
Woodcock, W'illiam, m, I49- 
W^oodward, Ralph, 136, 139. 
Woodworth, Abigail, 387, 388. 
Wright, Prof. Geo. F., 32-52, 74. 

Yager, Rev. Granville, 507. 521 



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